Go Wide - Missional Living

Good morning and welcome to this gathering of Hope Bible Fellowship. My name is Cal and I am the pastor here. If you are a guest with us or just now joining us online I want to give you a special welcome. If you would fill out one of our connection cards on the table as you leave, we’d love to connect with you.

I wanted to take a couple of minutes and let you what is coming up here at Hope. Next week, Feb. 5 we are doing a pulpit swap with Evangelical Free Church of Mt. Morris. Logan Murphy who is the associate pastor at Mt. Morris will be here to share with you and I will be in Mt. Morris preaching to the church there. I am really excited to be able to participate in this. I just wish I was going to be here to hear Logan with you. Please come and welcome Logan and his family next Sunday.

Well, we have come to the final week of our series all about the mission and vision of Hope Bible Fellowship. . We’ve been walking through our vision for making disciples and growing as a healthy church here in Dixon.

The mission of Hope Bible Fellowship is to make disciples of Jesus Christ by gathering together, growing deep, and going wide with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I’ve walked through our process of disciple making and that we want to move people to gather together for worship and equipping, grow deep together, and go wide on mission together. I hope you have been challenged by the Word of God toward deeper commitment to the local church here at Hope. I’m excited for the future of our church and hope many of you will want to join us. I hope that this morning’s message is encouraging to you.

The main idea of today’s message could be boiled down to this: Because Jesus has loved us and saved us, we must be living on mission everyday as we go out into our community making disciples.

To make it even simpler: We should be living a missional life.

A missional life is a going life.

You know, I can remember a time in ministry a few years ago when everyone was living on a sort of Field of Dreams mentality. Across the board we thought, “if we build it, they will come.“ So churches built bigger and nicer buildings and gyms and planned bigger and better and more sprawling programs to attract people to come to the church. And for a while, they came.

But between that day, not so long ago, and 2023 things have changed in the culture of America and the culture specifically as it relates to Christianity. In that previous time much of our country at least identified with church. Even if it was simply a cultural thing they would just culturally identify with it. But over the years there has been a steady shift in our culture, really more of a lurch, into secularism.

• According to Gallup poll research, one-third of all Americans consider themselves non-religious. They would report that “Religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services.” Americans are largely unmotivated to go out of their way for much of anything and that includes church.

• The days of someone joining a church because they wanted it to show up on their obituary or for standing in the community for connection purposes are over. Our culture has grown more and more hostile to the church. Of course there are various reasons for that which we can discuss another time but the bottom line is the church doesn’t have the same cultural standing it once had in America.

Jimmy Scroggins and Steve Wright report: “If we’re going to reach the millions who have yet to hear the gospel, we need to rethink our current invite strategy. Since we aren’t going to get them to “come and see” what we’re doing, we need to figure out ways to take the good news to the places they live, work, and play.”

We have to be going out and taking the The Great Commission seriously. Christians are a going people.

2 Corinthians 5:14–21 ESV

14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is the Word of the Lord. Let's pray and ask God to bless our time together this morning.

PRAY

What is Missional Living

Sometimes I’m afraid the word missional has gotten so overused in our church culture in the last twenty years, I feel like Indigo Montoya in the Princess Bride. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Missional living is living every day of your life as if you were a missionary planted right where you live. Because that is exactly what you are. It’s treating every day as if you were given a backpack and dumped out of a plane to parachute into a remote land to learn the culture and build relationships and share the Gospel in a way that the culture hears it. Just as a missionary to a foreign culture learns the language, customs, and other cultural touch points of a people they are sent to, we must also live this way right where God has already planted us.

A lot of churches consider themselves to be “missions minded” because they have a missions program. They might have a missions committee or give money to mission works around the globe. But a missional church is focused on, invested in, and oriented around God’s mission to a specific people, place, and time in history.

Tim Keller said, “ God does not merely send the church in mission. God is already in mission, and the church must join him. This also means, then, that the church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission.”

A well known preacher described the culture as being the soil in which the seed of the God’s work in our lives, the Gospel is planted. We must understand the soil because it will help us know which weeds to pull out and not choke the growth of the gospel and the church.

I. Why should we live a going life?

A. Because the love of Christ compels us.

If we look back at our focal passage for today, why did Paul do the ministry that he did? In verse 14 we find that it was the love of Christ that compelled or controlled him. The Greek word used there for love could refer to either the love Christ has for people or the love that they have for Him. The first option, the love Christ has for people, is the preferred understanding. It was Christ’s love for Paul and mankind that drove Paul to spread the gospel. God is sovereign and Paul would not have wanted to exalt himself or his own strength in loving God but instead give God glory as He was compelled to mission because of Christ’s love.

Because Jesus had demonstrated the sacrificial love of God by dying in the place of sinners on the cross, Paul had perspective on his hardships. It motivated him to proclaim the Gospel to the nations.

The world that gets translated control or compel can mean: to hold together as a unit, sustain, to stop or to shut, to press hard or crowd, to press in around, to hold in custody, guard, to cause distress by force of circumstances, to occupy someone’s attention intensely, to provide impulse for some activity, or to hold in bounds so as to manage or guide, direct, and control. I don’t tell you that to simply read the Greek dictionary to you. I want us to understand what that word is saying in the context of the passage.

If we continue onto verse 15 we see that Christ died for all people without distinction such as man, woman, social standing, profession, ethnicity, etc. Not everyone receives the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice. It is only for those who believe the gospel and live for Christ. Repent and believe the good news. Because Jesus died, the power of sin over His followers has been broken. That means that by Him and through Him we can live for the purposes of God - that the gospel be spread and disciples be made. If you have never heard this or never understood it and now understand that Jesus died in your place, for your sin, and you want to repent of your sin and trust in Him, I want to talk to you after service. Come see me.

I believe that if we are compelled by Christ’s love we will also love people. We have to love people… we must love the lost… it’s hard… they’re dirty…their lives aren’t right, they have issues, they’re lost… some seem more lost than others… AND SO WERE WE. Our lives aren’t perfect. We have issues. We have all sinned. But God, in His divine plan, put someone in our path that told us about Jesus. Someone shared how we could find forgiveness and peace with God. We need to want that for others.

B. We are Christ’s ambassadors.

We are Christ’s ambassadors. We are sent out as agents of reconciliation. An ambassador is a representative from another kingdom living in a foreign land and representing the king and the kingdom to those who are not yet of the kingdom. We are agents of reconciliation. Biblically speaking, our ministry is not providing backpacks, or parties, or giving food, or many of those other good things. Those things should be happening but they should be happening so as to help us in our ministry of reconciliation. We don’t just want to feed people so that they go to hell with a full belly. We want to feed people in the name of Jesus and give them the gospel so they taste the bread of life!

The means of reconciliation - Christ’s death ended the hostility between God and people. It is by His suffering that peace between God and humanity is possible. It is the ONLY way.

The world referred to in v 19 is “kosmos”. This refers to people who are estranged from God and under the influence of sin and the devil.

We must be intentional about this ministry. We have to plan for missional lives… IS your life set up with the thought of how you can best be living on mission in your community?

Missiologist Wilbert Shenk points out:

“The Great Commission institutionalizes mission as ... the controlling norm, of the church. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ and a member of his body is to live a missionary experience in the world. There is no doubt that this was how the earliest Christians understood their calling.” - Wilbert Shenk

C. Because of Joy

Logan Gentry writes,

“Joy results in mission. Mission is a result of joy. If mission is lacking, it’s because joy and delight in God are lacking”. - Logan Gentry

If you think about that for a minute, that will sting. If we look and see that our mission is lacking, we can generally trace it back and find that our joy and our delight in God are lacking. So the obvious question is: Are you truly delighting in God? Is Jesus where your joy is? When that is set right, our mission will start to be worked out on the other end.

D. To be obedient

John 20:21 ESV

21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

Jesus has sent us and therefore, we go.

Acts 1:8 ESV

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

II. How do we live a going life?

Here are two keys to help us be intentional in our living of a missional lifestyle.

A. Identity

- know your identity

B. Urgency

- living like we don’t know the time… because we don’t.

• Evangelism is done by you in your own personal relationships. But how does the church get involved? We are doing this whole series about the church? So how does this look within the life of a local church?

1. You can bring your non-Christian friends and family and know they will hear the Gospel and see visual representations of it. We sing it, preach it, pray it, and show it in our observing of the ordinances. Just our love for one another and having nothing in common but Jesus is a testimony of the power and life changing work of the Gospel.

2. My job as pastor is to equip you for ministry. This means that our church wants to, I want to, help you be faithful in sharing the gospel the other hours of the week when you are not in this building. We have ways of equipping and training you to do this. Taught through Explaining Christianity in our Hope Deeper series and hope to do more of these in the future.

3. We have events and ministries that help you introduce your people to the gospel and to members of our church at the same time.

These ministries are your responsibility. The command for personal evangelism and for loving your neighbor are given to individual Christians and not only to the church corporately. In other words, just because you gave money to a particular ministry doesn’t mean you have done your responsibility to share your faith with those around you.

Prayer, reading about evangelism

III. Where are we going to live a going life?

- A missional church, a going church, understands that it has been sent by God as missionaries in their own community, and culture. They have been sent specifically to make disciples of all people right there in Dixon or wherever they are planted.

- Right here.

• The Great Commission… Tells us to go...

• First locally, then globally...

Conclusion

What are we going to do and how are we going to do it?

1. Build solid relationships for gospel conversations.

Practical ways of building solid relationships:

-Eat with non-christians

-Throw parties

-Community playgrounds, pools, dog parks, etc

-Join Neighborhood committees

-Play Groups

-Be regular, meet with other regulars

-Be outside

-Volunteer with non-profits

-Participate in city events

- Hobbies with people

2. Pray for the lost with the church.

3. Pray for the lost in your devotions.

Who’s Your One? Who’s the one you will pray for every day for 30 days and then have a gospel conversation with? Who will you invite to church?

4. Be patient.

God works on His schedule and in His time. He is sufficient. He is sovereign. His Word is powerful and sufficient. Do you trust Him? Do you trust Him enough to order your life in a way that brings Him glory by spreading the good news of the gospel of reconciliation?

Maybe you have not. You’re not alone. Jesus offers forgiveness and a fresh start. Will you trust that He died for your lack of evangelism as well as all of your other sin? Repent and change your way of living.

A few points to ponder as you go out this morning:

1. What is compelling you? What is controlling you?

2. Are you being led by the love of Jesus or by fear?

3. God has spoken to this in His Word. Will you believe Him, take Him at His Word, and obey?

4. Will you begin living missional right where God has planted you?

5. The Good News tells us that we will fall short but that Jesus is sufficient and lived a perfect life on our behalf. So when you fall down on the job, get back up, and run to Jesus. That is what the world needs to see.