Sermon Tone Analysis

Scriptures: Various passages

Start Recording

Introduction

Good morning again to you.

I’m glad you are all here this morning.

For the next few weeks we are going to take a deeper look at where we are headed as a church and what we need to be doing as a church that seeks to be driven by the Gospel and faithful to the biblical model of a local church as we can be.

Call it a State of the Church or a mission and vision recalibration if you want.

After I finish that I plan to launch into a series on Nehemiah.

I hope you will continue with us as we move through this exciting book.

But now we are going to look specifically at what our church is supposed to look like and be doing.

We are going to take our marching orders, as we should, from various passages in the scripture.

This week will be a reminder of things I’ve shared the last couple of years about the vision and mission of our church.

Prayer

Let me ask you this question: How often do you think about your future?

Do you ever think about the future of our church?

What do you see as the future of our church?

I mean, specifically.

Don’t call it out, but what do you think about for the future of Hope Bible Fellowship?

Many of those sitting in this room have had their lives changed by an encounter with God facilitated by the ministry of this church.

I just think sometimes we just come to church and we go about the motions of everything we need to do and we fail to think about what things could look like or dream about how the church could look.

My friend, Tom Hufty, has a sort of life statement that he tries to live his life by.

Most of the people close to him could tell you what it is.

It’s good and it really encompasses part of the way we need to look at what we do as a church.

Live to touch a day I will never see… - Tom Hufty

Here’s what I see in this statement for us.

It’s recognizing and affirming that we are not working for our own good but working to to the glory of God so that in years that are beyond what we will experience, the glory of God and truth of the Gospel will be known here and that there will be people who have not even been born yet, serving the Lord in Dixon.

We should not be trying to make something for ourselves but for those who come after, for future generations.

As we look toward where we are going, we begin to throw around words like mission statement, vision, and others.

These two words, mission and vision, in particular get vastly misunderstood.

We have brought so many business practices into the church in America that it’s easy to get really turned around and if we are not careful we begin focusing on everything except the main thing.

I really don’t like business talk.

I think in many ways it misses the point entirely.

I want to get to the Word but first we need to look at what mission and vision actually are.

Mission – Stays the same through different times and places.

Think of it as the what.

What are we doing?

What is the mission?

What is the goal?

What is the endgame?

Vision - If mission is the what, then vision is the how.

Vision changes to align with particular times and places.

This doesn’t necessarily stay the same.

The vision is how we accomplish the mission set before us.

This raises a couple of important questions.

As we answer these important questions we will be forced to answer other questions associated with them.

In many cases serving the mission of the church actually will cause us to have to change our vision of the way that mission is accomplished.

I. What is our aim?

What are we aiming at?

What is our end goal?

Let me share a story with you.

Generally I like to go for walks by myself.

I used to get up and walk in the morning with Bethany.

I recall one stretch of time where for 5 days in one week we woke up and I begrudgingly got out the door and onto the bike path and slowly walked two miles.

Each day, I walked with her all the way to the street that marks about one mile from our house and then turned around and walked back.

Now, I’ve walked and jogged by myself before.

When I would set out with a goal, a target, a destination in mind, I would walk there and turn around and come back.

However, if I left the house and headed out for a “walk” but had not previously determined where I was headed or how long I was going to go, I would be very likely to decide I was too tired and turn off the path early or turn around early and head back.

Either I got tired or I just decided I didn’t have time to make the goal.

What I’m getting at here is that we need to have something we are trying to accomplish.

We need to have a target in mind or we will miss every time.

Checklist principle…

What is the mission we are setting out to accomplish?

I’m glad you asked because there is an answer to that in scripture.

This passage is familiar to some of you and brand new to others of you.

Let’s take a look at what it says on a basic level.

Jesus had directed his followers to go to the mountain and they saw Him and worshipped.

Some who were there doubted.

This is an amazing statement in and of itself.

Jesus comes near to them and gives what throughout the years and years of church history since then have come to be known as THE GREAT COMMISSION.

He tells them to GO.

And as they are going they are to make disciples of all nations… that’s pretty inclusive of all ethnicities.

He then tells them to baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Now, for many churches it’s like they stopped reading there.

Many churches were content to get someone to walk down an aisle and into the baptismal waters.

It’s part of the reason why in one major group of churches we find something like 14.8 million people considered members of local churches but on a given Sunday there are only about 5.3 million in the pews.

We have misplaced about 9 million people.

That’s a problem.

It’s because of a lack of discipleship in churches.

If you continue reading this passage, Jesus does not stop with baptism.

He goes on to command his disciples to teach these new converts to observe everything He had commanded them.

He ends with assuring them of his presence in their lives.

So, we must conclude that the mission of the church, the great commission is for us to MAKE DISCIPLES.

And if we stop at baptism, we really are not following the mission orders that our King has given us.

This begs us to ask a few other questions.

What is a disciple of Jesus?

How are disciples made?

How have we been doing at making disciples?

How are we specifically going to make disciples here?

Let’s take a closer look at these questions.

II.

What is a disciple of Jesus?

Bobby Jamieson writes:

To be a disciple is to be a student, someone who learns from and imitates his teacher.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are all called to continually learn from him and follow him in every area of life.

Practically speaking, this means that we need to realize that discipleship is a lifelong process.

In this life, none of us is a finished product.

We all need to continually progress as disciples.

None of us in this room are perfect.

I’ll do you one better.

No one in the world is perfect.