Mission
Notes
Transcript
Mission provides Focus- What are we to be about?
Mission provides Focus- What are we to be about?
We need to get back to the basics of what church is all about. Why are we here? What is the purpose of this congregation, at this particular time?
Do we come together primarily so that we can be more affective in feeding the hungry? While this issues is important and part of what it means to be a Christian. This is not the church’s primary mission. Does the church of Jesus Christ exist so that people can learn self-help techniques to make their temporal lives, the here and now lives, better? While following the principles found throughout the Scripture will make life better, that is not the primary focus of the church.
When we look at the mission of the church we can become lazer focused on what we are to be about as a group of believers. What is the Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ: Go make Disciples.
Most churches have forgot that is the primary reason the church exists in our world today. We are to go and make disicples for Jesus Christ.
What does it mean to “Go and make disciples?”
Go Make Disciples
Go Make Disciples
If we were to examine this phrase in English, a person could get the idea that every Christian is to drop everything that they are doing and Go to some far off country and tell people about Jesus. This way of looking at it has inspired many people. We have come up with things like three ways you can support missions: Go! Give or Pray! While is not altogether wrong, I do think that we can get a better understanding that will help the church of Jesus Christ way more.
The idea in the greek is not really the drop everything and go even though we do see people like the diciples do just that. The idea in the greek sounds more like this: As you go make disciples. Or in the PJV, it would read, “God the Father has given me all authority in heaven and on the earth. Therefore, I am going to give you this command. As you about your daily lives let your focus be on making disciples. You know what needs to happen. They need to repent and be baptized in the name of Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. After that, take all the wonderful things that I have asked you to do like feeding the hungry, providing for the poor and all the rest then teach them as my followers that what they should be doing as well. Will it be easy? No but don’t worry. I will be with you until the end of the age.”
That my friends is what we need to be focused on right now. You are not going to get more or less people in this building by focusing on money (well you might get less but probably not more) whether it’s about how much you have or how little you have. You are not going to get more people in church by focusing how whether the video camera should be downstairs or upstairs. You are going to get people to come into this building because you are doing your best, with the power of the Holy Spirit helping you, to make disciples of Jesus Christ.
We need to Recover This Mission!
Don’t get me wrong....feed the hungry is important!
Housing the homeless....that is is important! and the church should be about helping do those things but these are not the primary mission of the church. Why? Because if these were the only thing that church was about you would not need the church. You could join some other club or group that does these things. But there is no other group where saving souls is the primary purpose of their existence. If we as a congregation or an annual conference, as a world wide denominations forsake our primary purpose: To call humanity to repent of their sin through the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb we might as well join these other groups because we have failed to be the church of Jesus Christ.
Listen to how C.S. Lewis said it. He said, “ The Church exists for no other purpose (mission) but to draw men (and women) into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”
You see the early Methodist movement was to be an evangelistic movement. Above all else, they were to be concerned with preaching the gospel and the salvation of souls. Wesley wrote to his preachers, “It is not your business to preach so many times, and to take of this or that society, but to save as many souls as you can. To bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and with all your power to build them up in the holiness without which they cannot see the Lord.”
I submit to you today that this is the Mission that needs to be recovered. This should be the main focus of this church or for that matter any church. Do we need money to do this? Sure. But the money and keeping the building open will take on a different importance when you put the salvation of the human soul first.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit! Amen