"The Mission Driven Church"
Sermon Transcript for October 20, 2002 By Rev. Mike Beck
Today is the second in a series of four sermons on the nature and mission of Christ’s church. And if you’d have asked me the purpose of these messages I would say this, "That we might stand back and look at who we are in light of what the Scripture calls us to be. And then also to understand as a body why we do so many things that we do." These messages are in preparation for launching the Care Ministry—a ministry that has the potential to take Grace Church to a higher level.
We’ll begin each of these messages reviewing the mission statement of Grace Church. Something each of you ought to have memorized. So repeat it with me; it’s there on the screen. "The mission of Grace Church is to worship God, proclaim Christ as Savior, encourage growth in Christ the Lord, fellowship together, and care for those in need."
Every one of those five things are important as part of what we do. But we began last week by looking at how easy it is for the church, often unintentionally, to fall into a "maintenance model" of ministry. The "maintenance model" church is filled with wonderful Christian people who love God, who love each other, and who do numerous good deeds in the name of Christ. But at the same time, the Great Commission, to win the lost and make disciples, can easily become the great "omission".
In the "maintenance model church", if you look at the activities taking place, most of them are for the maintenance of the members. We want the members to come, get blessed, and go home. Come back, get blessed, and go home. Most of the church’s resources, both human and financial, are invested in maintaining what we already have. There is very little time and energy or money spent trying to figure out how to bring the gospel to persons who haven’t yet come to know Christ.
I pointed out last week that it is much easier and more comfortable to be a maintenance model church, both for the laity and the Pastors. For in a maintenance model church, you don’t have to deal as often with the tensions of growth. You don’t have to deal with change, building programs, and ever-increasing budgets. You don’t have to deal with a lot of new Christians who have little or no experience or background in the church.
And last week, and I want to stress it again, we are not saying that maintenance is bad. We’ve got a responsibility to care for who we are, for the people that call Grace Church their church home, for our facilities. But it is just that we must recognize that maintenance and mission are two different things; and carrying out our mission must be primary.
This morning I want to look at the characteristics of a "mission-driven" church. What does it look like? What are its priorities and values? How does a mission-driven church differ from a maintenance-model church? I want to lift up twelve characteristics. We’ll do it pretty quickly each of those are important.
- Mission-driven churches recognize that the culture in which they are called to minister has drastically changed over the last few decades
. Looking out at this congregation, I realize--in fact I lived through that decade--many of you attended church faithfully in the 1950’s. But we no longer live in the 1950’s. In fact, the world has dramatically changed in 2002 from 1992. The message we proclaim is the same, but the listening ear of the world to which God has called to hear that message has dramatically changed. The mission-minded church recognizes that.- Mission-driven churches place an emphasis on the authority of Scripture and the study of God’s Word
. This coming Wednesday in our Wednesday evening service, and for the next six weeks, we are going to begin a series of messages entitled, "First Love", using some of Mike Slaughter’s materials. Mike has done a great deal of study in the various periods of renewal in the history of God’s church. One if the things that Mike in his study found was always present in time of renewal was an emphasis on the authority of the Word of God and the study of the Word. Mission-driven churches recognize that.- Mission-driven churches are concerned about unsaved persons. They believe that persons are eternally lost apart from the saving grace of Jesus Christ
. We’ve kind of glossed that over in the day and age in which we live. And friends, I don’t believe in the hell of eternal fire and torment, but I do believe the Word of God teaches that your family members, your neighbors, your friends who have not come to a saving grace in Christ are headed for a Godless eternity. The mission-driven church is concerned about that.- The members of mission-driven churches are intentional about inviting their unsaved neighbors and friends to church
. I won’t ask for a show of hands, I’ll just ask you to look within. How many of you intentionally invited someone to come to church with you in the last three months? Mission-driven churches realize you can put all the ads you want in the newspaper and on cable TV, but the most effective means of others coming to Christ is for you to invite them to come and worship with you. You’re going to have a wonderful opportunity during Advent. Advent is the best season of the year to invite unsaved people to come to church with you. Our Advent series this year is tied in with the play, the movie "The Christmas Carol", which everybody knows. And the series is entitled, "From Humbug to Hallelujah". You need to be inviting your unsaved neighbors and friends to come with you.- In the mission-driven church, there is an emphasis on prayer that goes beyond praying for the sick
. Now am I saying we shouldn’t pray for the sick? Heavens, no! But think about the prayers you hear at some churches. That’s all they do! They pray for the sick. In mission-driven churches, whatever is coming up they pray for! When the Nominations Committee goes to work, there are people praying for God to raise up the right leaders. They are praying for youth group leaders. They are praying for kids in school to become a part of our youth group. They are praying for lost people. They are praising God for answers to prayer. In mission-driven churches, prayer is much broader than just praying for the sick.- In mission-driven churches, there is an emphasis on "evangelism" in every area of the church’s life
. In terms of worship, the mission-driven church recognizes there are going to be people sitting in pews who have no religious background at all so you’d better print the number of the Lord’s Prayer so that they can look it up in the hymnal. In the mission-driven church they are going to recognize that there are people who are new who haven’t yet come to the saving faith in Jesus Christ. In a mission-driven church when it selects its mission projects, yes—it’s going to help human hurt and need in the world—but it’s going to make sure that a significant number of it’s mission projects relates to proclaiming the gospel. When a mission-driven church has fellowship events, it’s so the people will use them as a good opportunity to invite and say, "Neighbors and friends, come with me". If you have young children, tonight who are coming to the pumpkin party, bring your neighbor or friend with you.When Dan and I went to Kansas City for the Care Ministry Pastor’s Workshop, we heard the most interesting story of a church that was considering having a church softball team in the church softball league. They asked the pastor if that would be okay. The pastor said, "Yes, on one condition. A third of the players on the team have to be unsaved persons." And the pastor said, "We were the only church on the league where some of the players were going out for a beer after the ball game was over. But we were the only team in the league, that had somebody on the team come to know Christ because of this activity." I’m looking at Dad; he used to pitch on our Columbia softball team. And I’m sure Danny Selby comes to his mind. Danny Selby’s a pastor today. But why did he start coming to Columbia church? --Because he loved to play softball; and in the midst of playing softball, he came to know Jesus.
- In a mission-driven church, persons are asking where God is at work and seeking to join Him in that work
. Now on the surface, that seems to be insignificant, but it isn’t. Do you know how most churches do ministry? They did the same thing they did last year, which was the same thing they were doing ten years ago. In the mission-driven church, they are looking around and saying, "Where is God at work? And if He’s at work there, we’d better join him at work. If you’d ask me this morning, "Where is God most at work in Grace Church?" I would say, "In our youth group which has grown from twenty to fifty in the last two years." Now if God is at work in the youth group, even though money is tight, we’d better find some resources to direct in to that growing youth ministry. Why? --Because God is at work there.- And in this one I preference it with the words "in general" because there is no blanket rule. In general, pastors of mission-driven churches are primarily focused on worship, vision-casting, discipleship, and leadership development. And you notice shepherding and care giving aren’t in that list. Now does that mean the pastors don’t believe care giving is important? Absolutely not! I was in Johnson Memorial Hospital twice this week. I’ve been involved in two or three counseling situations. I did some pastoral care before worship this morning. The pastors in mission-driven churches see that people are cared for; they don’t think it is their responsibility to do all the care giving. You may have heard me say that I realized when I came to Grace Church and they handed me a list eleven pages long of special needs persons, I realized that if I tried to do the care giving that’s all I’d get done and even then I wouldn’t do it very well.
- In mission-driven churches, care giving is seen as a responsibility of the entire church and not simply the role of the pastors. I made three or four calls this week, but there were 45 visits made. Most of them were made by the Caring Ministry Team, by the Ministers of Pastoral Care, by our Parish Nurse. In fact, I realized we had turned the corner when I stopped in one day to visit an elderly lady and she said to me, "What are you doing here Reverend Mike? You’ve got more important things to do than visit me. Get out of here." Because you see one of the Ministers of Pastoral Care was there the week before. And a member of the Caring Ministry team was there the week before. She got it! She understood. Maybe it wasn’t the pastor’s role to do all of the care giving. And she realized that when the pastor stopped trying to do it all she got visited three times as often as she used to get visited.
- In the mission-driven church there is an emphasis on training and empowering the laity for team ministry. Team ministry is not a committee. In fact most committees in the church ought to be disbanded and done away with because they don’t advance the mission. In a mission-driven church, the principle of "multiply yourself" is understood. Ministry is given away to other people. I’m so proud of Steve Wakefield in this regard. Steve’s heart, more than any place else, is in the mission trips. But two months ago, he gave away the responsibilities to Veneita Taylor and Jackie Shatto. And we now have 40 instead of 25 going on next year’s mission trip. Ministry is given away and shared with others.
- Mission-driven churches put a greater emphasis on the local church than on denominational or inter-church activities. Does that mean denominational and inter-church activities are not important? No, I didn’t say that. But the mission-driven church recognizes energy and time and resources are not unlimited. So they prioritize what is most important to carrying out the mission. And they therefore say, "I’d love to do that. I’d love to be on that conference committee. But the mission will be diminished if I do." In fact, could I be so bold as to say that if even a half of the energy in the United Methodist church in the last four decades that was put into merger and into conference and district committees, if we’d taken even half of that energy and invested it back into the local church, we would not have seen a 30% decline in membership. I went to a meeting this week where I heard two pastors of the largest churches in this annual conference say, "If it doesn’t get done at the local church, it doesn’t get done." Conference—you’re killing us when you slap us with 20% increases in apportionments because we’re growing! That’s not Reverend Mike just saying it, that’s Kent Millard of St. Luke’s Church saying the local church does not exist to serve the conference. Mission-driven churches understand that.
- In the mission-driven church, there is an emphasis on the "relational" church and not on the church as a building. In the mission-driven church they are all of the time encouraging people to be in small groups. Why—because that’s where transformation occurs. We’ll be talking more about that next week.
The Care Ministry philosophy is this—and it’s true friends. "When we restore the mission to the church, God releases revival in the church." That’s what the care ministry is all about. When we restore the mission to the church, God releases revival in the church. Dr. Lewis, who was my seminary professor, taught me to preach inductively. He said you lead people to the text. So I read it in closing this morning, asking that God would help our prayer to be that we be this kind of church. Now let me paraphrase. "Therefore let all of Franklin be assured of this, that God has made this Jesus, who was crucified, both Lord and Christ. And when the people heard this they were cut to the heart. And they said to Peter and to the other Apostles, ‘Brothers, what must we do to be saved?’ And Peter replied, ‘Repent; be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off. For all whom the Lord, our God, will call.’ And with many other words he warned them and he pleaded with them, ‘Save your self from this corrupt generation.’ And those who accepted his message were baptized. And about 3,000 were added to their number that day." That’s a mission-driven church. May we strive to be them. Amen.
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