It’s Time to discover & fulfill our God-given mission

If the church is to be relevant today, we need to discover and fulfill our God-given mission. The church’s mission statement is not hidden. It is found in all four gospels (Mt 28.19-20; Mk 16.15; Lk 24.47; Jn 20.21) and Acts 1:8. It is also found in Paul’s letters.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5.17-21

God made us partners in His ministry of reconciling humanity to Himself. Our involvement is significant. We are called Ambassadors for Christ. We have Christ’s authority for carrying out God’s mission.

The church gathered gains spiritual power. The church scattered brings that spiritual to all the dark corners of the world. God’s people can be found in places where people are hurting enabling us to bring words of hope and encouragement from the gospel.

God’s people can be found in key areas of society that have been corrupted by sin. These include government, media, entertainment, business and education. These areas that can be a blessing are often sources of injustice, oppression and corruption. “Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:18).”

We must use our prayers and influence and work to reconcile these areas bringing them into harmony with the teachings of Jesus. It was the church that has historically brought so much justice and relief of human suffering into the world. We must rediscover that missional spirit so that the church continues to be a transformational force in society.

Sermon audio

Robbing St. Peter's to grow St. Paul's

In the last 30 years we have gone from a handful of megachurches to a handful in every major city. These big box churches have perfected the attractional model of church growth where the main focus is the weekend worship service. Like big box stores they offer more and better services than the smaller mom and pop churches can.

On the other hand, while megachurches flourish, overall church attendance continues to decline in America. Like mom and pop shops that suffer when a big box store opens nearby, neighborhood churches suffer when megachurches attract Christians from surrounding churches. Small churches cannot compete with the professionalism and production values offered by the megachurches.

Although megachurches target younger adults, Gen Xers still tend to stay away from church and Millennials have the lowest church attendance rate of any previous generation. Not only does overall church attendance continue to decline but, also, hundreds of churches in the US die every year and more than 80% of our existing churches are plateaued or declining.

At the same time, denominational leaders and seminary graduates spend precious resources to start the next megachurch. We have gotten good at the attractional model but, rather than being the answer, it appears that it might be part of the problem. We are growing some churches by subtracting from others.

American churches are in need of renewal and revival. Over the years we have allowed the Sunday event to drive the ministry. Sunday is when we worship, teach, fellowship and evangelize. Missional activities are an optional add-on.

If we are to renew and revive the church we must look to the Bible and rediscover the missional church. Missional is a term that is being used to indicate a movement to align the church away from Sunday-oriented, entertainment-style gatherings and back to the church carrying out God's mission. Missional means more than a church doing mission activities. It means a church understanding how God is at work in the world and joining him there.

Baptist Temple is beginning a sermon series entitled “It’s Time… a journey to missional faithfulness”. Over the next six weeks we will explore how to recover the vitality of the church. We will seek to restore the relevance of the church by returning to the mission of God.

Missions, Evangelism and New Church Starts

Missions in the New Testament involves evangelism and new church starts. In Acts 2:41 we read that 3000 people were baptized following Peter’s evangelistic sermon. Later, these groups formed communities that we call church and the Lord added to their number daily (v. 47)

The laity were involved in church planting from the beginning. New churches were started by believers who were scattered by persecution in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1; 11:19). Phillip preached the gospel and baptized many. The Apostles came later to support the work.

The church at Antioch commissioned and sent Paul and Barnabas to go on a mission trip. They proclaimed the gospel in synagogues and public places, gathering the new believers into churches and teaching them. Paul would appoint elders from the new congregation and move to the next location. He would check on his new churches through later visits and correspondence. This pattern was repeated in all of Paul’s mission trips.

While proclaiming the gospel, the New Testament Church did attend to the physical needs of people. There were miraculous healings and sharing of resources with the poor but the main task remained to preach Christ, gather into churches and teaching to obey all that Christ commanded.

Contemporary missions should follow the same New Testament pattern. The pay off for missions ought to be baptisms and new, indigenous churches among the people we serve. If all we do is clothe, feed and educate are we not just sending them to hell a little fatter and smarter? How faith-based is a program that does not yield faith decisions?

Missions is not an either/or proposition? Evangelism or felt-needs? It ought to be both.

Helping people in need is clearly commanded by God and modeled by Jesus. The immediate goal of benevolence ministry is to relieve human suffering. A secondary goal is to build relationships with hurting people. The ultimate goal is to bring about genuine life change in individuals through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The intent of missions among the poor and needy is to demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ, not simply to provide services. It provides a point of redemptive connection and adds credibility to our communication of the gospel.

One such model is Life of Faith Christian church in far north Chicagoland. The heart of the church is a food pantry that also provides clothes, furniture and referrals. Pastor Michael Pimpo uses this platform to connect not only with the needy, who are open to the gospel because of their current crisis, but also to people who want to serve, many of whom are unchurched pre-Christians.

The result of his effort recently yielded five believers baptisms. This may not seem like a large number but it is more than most churches will do this year.

The American church is currently in decline despite having the largest number of seminary trained ministers and having more money than any other church in the world. It’s possible that there is something wrong with our training methods and missions strategies.

It’s time that our missionaries and church planters start working together to bring that New Testament pattern resulted in so many people coming to Christ.

Missional Churches Demonstrate a Bias to Action

Coaches and business leaders have noticed that high achievers have a bias to action. They can't wait to get started and want to take action now.

People who have a record of successful achievement in sports, business or any other field display a can-do attitude. Their motto is, “Strike while the iron is hot!” While some people have a need to plan out all the details before acting, high achievers tend to jump into projects, making adjustments along the way.

This same attitude can transfer into ministry. When encountering a man born blind (John 9), Jesus’ disciples wanted to discuss the circumstances of the situation, Jesus demonstrated a bias to action by healing the man. Jesus taught to act whenever confronted by an opportunity, whether it is feeding a crowd or healing one person.

Peter also demonstrated this bias to action. When confronted by a crowd that gathered on the Day of Pentecost, Peter preached the gospel (Acts 2). When a lame beggar asked for money, Peter healed him (Acts 3).

A missional church should be able to take quick action when a ministry opportunity presents itself. If you need to wait for the next business or board meeting, the opportunity will disappear. If you are afraid about what a few of the more critical members will think, little will ever get done.

When church leaders see a ministry opportunity and ask, “What would Jesus Do?” instead of what will Mr. X think, things happen. In one church a family called and asked if the church had a nursery. Although the nursery had not been used for some time, the pastor said yes and made sure it was cleaned and staffed that Sunday. That was the beginning of a growing nursery ministry.

People in a missional church
- see a need and fill it
- anticipate a problem and head it off
- make adjustments to improve ministries
- are not afraid of failure