The Strategy for Our Mission

Introduction

This is the final sermon in an important series where we unveil the vision for our church moving forward. That God would grant us vision for the future has been at the heart of much of the prayer in this church for the last year or two, and we believe that God has answered that prayer.

Review Mission

The first week we examined the mission of the church and unveiled our church’s new mission statement: to invite all people to life under a better King.

Our mission answers the question, why? Why do we exist? What is the reason God created our church for? We do not exist to maintain property, to grow an organization, or form a social club. We exist to make disciples. We want to invite people to live underneath Jesus’ gracious rule and experience him as better than anything this world has to offer.

Review Values

The next four weeks we turned to examine four core values that will shape our church as we seek to fulfill our mission together. Our values answer the question of what? What will drive us and shape us as we fulfill our mission?

A Better Message. We believe that we have the best message in the world, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that message is central to everything we do as followers of Jesus. The gospel is not just the ABC’s of the Christian faith. It is the A to Z of the Christian faith.

A Better Family. We believe that God has saved us to be a part of his forever family, a community more significant and meaningful that even our blood relatives. We believe that because of the Holy Spirit’s gifting, we are better together.

A Better Job. We believe that each member of our church is an official representative of King Jesus and his agenda in the world. Every member is a minister and the main job of our leaders is to equip us for ministry as Christ’s ambassadors.

A Better Party. We believe that as Christians we have more reasons to party than anyone else. We want to celebrate all that God has done for us and want to invite others to the party. As such, Christians should be the life of every party.

What is a strategy?

The last question that we need to answer is how? How will we carry out the mission that God has given us? What is the game plan? In other words, what is the strategy that we are going to follow as we carry out our mission to invite all people to life under a better King?

Some of us are strategizers and others are more of the fly by the seat of your pants in their approach to planning.

I don’t know if you know this, but it is quite the ordeal to fly with four kids across the country. When we go on vacation, Jessica is in charge of all of the planning and packing. She helps the kids remember to bring everything they need. Me too! She separates all of the stuff you have to pull out of your bag in security into little baggies to make the process go smoothly. She ensures we have gum for adjusting our ears to the changes in cabin pressure. She brings disinfectant wipes for the armrests and trays in our seats. She has neck pillows and sweatshirts to keep us comfortable. She packs snacks for the kids. She has a system for our luggage that helps us identify them on the carousel. Usually, we have a pretty smooth experience and we get where we want to go, in large part due to her planning.

Can you imagine what would happen if I was in charge of the planning? I guarantee you that we wouldn’t have enough clothes, it would take us two days to get through security, my kids would be cold and hungry on the plane, and I am almost positive that I would lose at least one of them along the way.

When thinking about the mission of church we must have a strategy in place if we hope to be successful in fulfilling that mission.

Now, it is common for some Christians to balk at the idea of having an overall strategy for carrying out their mission. There is the idea that if we make plans that we are somehow being unspiritual or not allowing the Spirit to work in our church.

Well here is the reality. No one drifts into greater faithfulness. No one stumbles into discipleship. It is always the result of intentionality. If you do not set a specific time aside to read your Bible or pray, you rarely will. Similarly, if we never come up with a clear path for what discipleship looks like in our church, we can expect few disciples to be made.

So, when we talk about a strategy for our mission, what we are really talking about is a clear pathway for discipleship at WSBC. We want to be able to identify the next step for every person we encounter.

A strategy is a clear pathway for discipleship at WSBC

We want to be able to identify the next step for every person we encounter

Our Strategy

In order to help unpack our strategy, I want to look at how Matthew’s Gospel presents Jesus as the Great Disciple Maker. If our goal is to make disciples of Jesus, we would do well to look at how Jesus made disciples of Jesus!

Meet the King

Matthew 4:23–25 ESV

And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

Matthew 4.23-

One of the things you see in Jesus’ ministry, is his commitment to meet the needs of those outside of his immediate group of disciples and to invite them to consider the Kingdom of God.

Matthew sums up much of Jesus’ ministry here as a traveling preacher, going into synagogues and towns and performing miracles. He has his disciples do the same later. Jesus has a heart for those outside the Kingdom of God and so ministered to them to give them a taste of what life is like in his Kingdom.

Likewise, the first step of our strategy is called Meet the King. We want to provide people outside our community of faith with an opportunity to be exposed to King Jesus and his people.

Part of what is challenging about reaching people in our region is that most people have zero interest in attending a church. Some do, but they are the exception. So, if we hope to invite all people to life under a better King, we are going to need to meet them where they are at.

So as a part of our strategy we will have events and other ministries whose main design is for people to be introduced to King Jesus.

For example, this summer we will be having a block party and inviting our community in to celebrate with us with free food and games and prizes. I will be giving a brief message, explaining the gospel, and inviting people to take the next step in investigating the Kingdom of God.

The idea is to have a low bar of entry and commitment in such ministries. We want to ease them in to life with King Jesus.

Ministries that fit this part of our strategy include ministries like the Gathering, Lights On, Halloween, and others. We will be introducing more in the coming years.

For most of our friends and family who do not know God, this will be step one on the path for discipleship. We aren’t looking for them to commit to anything at the beginning. We just want to get them to come hang out with us at Lights On, or the Gathering, or a small group BBQ. Once they get that introduction to us, we want to invite them to the next step.

Gather Under the King

Matthew 5:1 ESV

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Jesus would often take time to gather his disciples in the midst of the crowds and begin to teach them. One such example is found here, right at the beginning of the sermon on the mount. The sermon on the mount is addressed to Jesus’ disciples, however, as Jesus teaches, he keeps the crowds in mind. He is doing official Kingdom business as he is gathered with his disciples, but he is giving the crowds a window in to life in the Kingdom.

Similarly, this is how the second step for our strategy will function. Step two is Gather Under the King. We are called to gather formally as Jesus’ disciples regularly. That is what we are doing this morning. Our worship service is an official court session of King Jesus, where his people gather to sing praises to God and sit underneath the teaching of his word.

But as we gather together as the church we are inviting those outside of the community of faith in for a peak into Kingdom life. Once a person has had that first point of contact with King Jesus, we want to invite them to experience his people gathered underneath him.

Our hope in the process of gathering with us regularly under the regular preaching of the gospel that they will receive the gospel for themselves, turning from their sin to trust in the work of Christ.

At the same time, though we have an eye upon those who are not yet disciples of Jesus, the message, the worship, the prayer, the praise, the reading of Scripture, is meant to build up those who are disciples. When we gather together as the church we are built up and encouraged to repent of sin and to grow in greater faithfulness. We are reminded anew of the gospel of our salvation.

As people become disciples of Jesus we want to invite them to take the next step along the path of discipleship in our church.

Grow With the King

Matthew 13:10–11 ESV

Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

After Jesus would teach the multitudes or his gathered disciples, a smaller group would often approach him for further teaching. For example, this passage follows Jesus telling the parable of the sower. His disciples were still unsure of what Jesus meant and so they met with him in a smaller group where Jesus explained the parable further.

Matthew 13.10

Matthew 17:1 ESV

And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

Matthew 17.1-

Jesus often would take just a few disciples with him to invest in their spiritual growth. For example, he often took Peter, James and John along to do ministry. Or in this case, he brought them up on the mountain so that they might experience Jesus’ transfiguration.

He met often with the 12, outside of the time he spent with the crowds or even with the other disciples. Jesus did this because simply gathering in a large assembly is not enough for a person’s spiritual growth. We grow best when a part of a smaller group of disciples where we can practice the biblical one another’s and apply biblical truth to each other’s lives.

Our third step in our strategy follows this principle as well and is call Grow with the King. Remember, the mission is not to grow an event. We aren’t after having a well attended worship service for its own sake. We are after inviting people into life with King Jesus, a life of discipleship. The best way to do that is in smaller communities of faith.

This fall we will be relaunching small groups. We will be calling them growth groups, in keeping with our strategy. They will be meeting weekly to study God’s word together and apply it to their lives. This is where we will focus on growing disciples of Jesus.

So the next step for a person who is attending our worship service and makes a commitment to pursue Jesus as one of his disciples will be to get plugged in to a growth group.

It is at this point where we will be encouraging people to partner with the church through membership. The reality is that if a person is not interested in growing as a disciple of Jesus with other disciples of Jesus then membership is not for them.

As people commit to grow in discipleship in community in our church, we want them to continue along the path of discipleship to our fourth step.

Serve the King

Matthew 14.13-

Matthew 14:13–16 ESV

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

Matthew 14:13–14 ESV

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

Matthew 14.13-

Matthew 14:15–16 ESV

Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

Matthew 14.15-16

After Jesus heard of his cousin John’s death, he wanted to go be alone and went into the wilderness. The crowds followed him out there so he begin serving them. The evening grew late and Jesus’ disciples urged him to send them away to grab dinner. Then Jesus tells the disciples something remarkable: YOU GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO EAT.

Jesus had been teaching these guys for awhile and as they sat in the middle of the wilderness he expected that they were to serve others as they had been served by Christ.

Of course at this point the disciples make excuses, and Jesus ends up helping them feed the masses by multiplying bread and fish. Still, the disciples served the people and collected the left overs.

Matthew 10.1-

Matthew 10:1–7 ESV

And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

Matthew 10:1–4 ESV

And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Matthew 10:5–7 ESV

These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

Matthew 10.5-7

Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus sent the twelve disciples out to do the very ministry he had been modeling before them. Just as Jesus preached and healed, so too were they to go teach and heal.

In both of these cases we can see that Jesus did not expect his disciples to be cul-de-sacs of God’s grace, where Jesus’ work stopped with them. Rather they were to be avenues of God’s grace channeling Jesus’ work through them to others.

Likewise, the final and ongoing step of our strategy is to Serve the King. We have failed as disciple makers if our disciples do not in turn go on to serve and make disciples themselves. As our members grow in community, they in turn must go and serve the church and those outside the church.

We have no shortage of opportunities to serve, even now as a church. We need children’s workers, greeters, small group leaders, singers and musicians, nursery helpers, deacons and elders and pastors, cooks and cleaners. If we stop at step 3 we will become spiritually fat Christians, consuming Bible study after Bible study, rather than exercising all of the things we are learning as disciples by passing on the work of God to others.

So that is our strategy for fulfilling the mission of God. Meet the King. Gather Under the King. Grow with the King. Serve the King.

What this means for us

For our church

The goal will be to eventually align all of our ministries to this strategy. Often, churches function like a buffet. There are tons of different ministries and you wander the isles trying to find what you like. Heck you can go and camp at the desert table from the start if you want. Though this may be an enjoyable experience for a meal, it can be frustrating for guiding personal growth in the church. Having too many options available to you leads to option fatigue, and you can get lost regarding where you should go or what you should do next.

Instead the church should function more like a dinner party with a four course meal. You start with the appetizer, then the salad, then the main course, followed by dessert. We want to funnel people in our church down the path of discipleship in our church and lead them to take the next step. Lord willing, over the next year or two we will align most of what we do as the church underneath this strategy.

Take the next step

I want to encourage you to consider where you think you may be on the discipleship pathway this morning.

This may be your first time here at our church. I want to encourage you to continue attending our worship services over the next few weeks, so that you can get a taste of what it looks like to gather under King Jesus. If you want to know about how you can become a true citizen of Jesus’ Kingdom, you can speak with me after worship in the cafe.

Some of you attend our worship services somewhat regularly, and you have trusted in Jesus and want to grow in your walk with him. The next step for you will be joining a group of other disciples who want to grow. We will have growth groups launching in the Fall and I strongly encourage you to consider joining one. In addition, we have a midweek service led by Pastor Joe, and a men’s Bible Study on Friday mornings, and a women’s study on Friday evenings that are good opportunities to grow in the mean time.

Finally, if you are already plugged into a smaller community, the next step for you might be to begin serving regularly. There are more options for service than I have time to list this morning, but if you grab me following worship, we can talk about where you can begin serving in the church on a more regular basis.

Ending this series

I know this sermon, and even this whole series, has been a bit different but it has been absolutely essential for charting our course forward. If you consider yourself a regular part of our church, I would encourage you to go online and review any of the sermons from this series that you missed.

I hope you are as excited as I am about what God is going to do with our church as we take up the mission, values, and strategy he has guided us to. I look forward to inviting all people to life under a better King with each and every one of you.