The Church On Purpose
6-12/13-04
The Church On Purpose
Today I am beginning to present the 9 Ways God Wants Us To Reach Our World. These are 9 principles that God has given us to determine what we do as a church and how we do it. It was exactly 2 years ago this month that I taught these principles in the Roadmap to the Future of our Church. We are revisiting these 9 principles now that we are 2 years down the road to see how we’re doing and to help everyone who has joined us in the last 2 years to understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. Actually, everyone who has become part of the church in the last 2 years has probably done so largely because of what we’ve done since starting down this road 2 years ago. If we had not taken these steps God has given us, those of you who have joined us in the last 2 years probably wouldn’t be here today. So, we have already experienced these principles at work in our church and we want to explain what they are so we all stay on track.
Understand Our Purpose
The first principle is the most important of them all. This is the principle of Purpose. It is quite interesting that just a couple of months after I taught these 9 principles, our church was among the very first group of churches in the whole country to enter the 40 Days of Purpose based on the Purpose Driven Life. The books we received for that were part of the very first Purpose Driven Life books shipped from the publisher. Since then the book has become a best seller and the purpose-driven life has become a national phenomenon. One of the main reasons is because every human being wants to know what the purpose of life is. Why are we here on earth, and what gives life real meaning? We all want to know our purpose and we all want to experience fulfillment. What is true for individuals is also true for churches. Churches that are healthy and full of life are churches filled with God’s Spirit and God’s purpose.
Purpose gives meaning to life and makes it worthwhile to live. Purpose helps people overcome the setbacks they suffer. Purpose motivates victims of tragedy to survive. Two men crawled onto the beach of a lonely island after their plane crashed in the ocean. One man sat calmly in the sand while the other ran around the island assessing their situation. He returned to his companion and said, “We’re going to die. We’re alone on this island. Nobody knows where we are. There’s no plant or animal life on this island and there’s no water. We’re going to die.” To that his surviving companion replied, “I get paid 25,000 a week. We’ll survive.” The first man said, “What are you talking about? It doesn’t matter how much money you make. We’re going to die.” His friend just said again, “I get paid $25,000 a week. We’ll get out of here.” And again the distressed survivor said, “You’re crazy. We have no food and no water and we’ll be dead in a week. It doesn’t matter how much money you get paid.” “Oh yes it does,” the other responded. “I get paid $25,000 a week and I tithe it to the church. As soon as my pastor finds out I’m missing he’ll do whatever it takes to find me.” That’s motivating and that’s got purpose.
The opening line of the first chapter of the The Purpose Driven Life book says, “It’s not about you.” What a spiritually significant and powerful statement this is for us as individuals and for all of us as a church. It’s true because...
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” [James 4:6]
God gives His strength and power to people for whom everything is not all about them. Jesus said true life here on earth is not about self and the only way to get eternal life is to trade in your self-ish life for the self-less life like Jesus.
"If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself." [Matthew 16:24, Contemporary English Version]
“If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.” [Matthew 16:25, New Living Translation]
When I first began ministry here 10 years ago, I remember having many conversations with Dale Mumaw, one of our elders, when we talked about this principle changing our church. It’s amazing what can get done when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. You see, it's not about me and it's not about you. Long before Rick Warren wrote The Purpose Driven Life, God wrote the purpose of life and He said, “Dear people of mine: It’s not about you.”
The problem with so many of God’s people and God’s churches being messed up has been that they think it is about them. People have said things like: “I don’t go to church, because I don’t get anything out of it.” Or, “I’m not going to that church anymore, because I’m not getting fed.” I’m sorry, but church is not about you getting fed. That sounds a lot like the people who came to Jesus after the miracle of the 5 loaves and 2 fish and they asked Him to do something for them and on purpose He startled them by saying, “Feed on Me.” He said, “It’s not about Me doing something for you. It’s about you doing what I say.” Jesus is God and you’re not. On another occasion when His disciples came to the well where Jesus was outside the village of Sychar where they had gone for food, they tried to get Him to eat some of it and He said...
“My food is to do what God wants!” [John 4:34, Contemporary English Version]
You see, it’s not about you and it’s not about being fed. It’s about feeding others. It’s not about what you can get, it’s about what you can give. If you’ve been here a few months you’ve already received enough to be able to give some to someone else. If you’ve been here a few months, the church is no longer here for what you can get for yourself, but we are here as a church for how we can help others get what we’ve already received.
A lot of people think the church is in the business of education, encouragment and entertainment. A lot of people have looked at the church and thought of it as the place they take their kids to get a moral education. A lot of people think the church is there to provide a weekly inspiration and encouragment for life so they can get through another week at work, in the world and with their family. A lot of people just want to get a little spiritual refreshment from church and maybe just a little entertainment to be a diversion from the routine before jumping back into it again. A lot of people just want church to be there. Their thought (even if subconscious) is, “It’s the weekend, so we’ve got to have church.” For a lot of people going to church is going through activities that are depended upon for a secure and comfortable life.
We even spiritualize and scripturalize our self-centered ideas about church. In our Step 1 class we teach the pictures from the Bible that describe what the church is so we can act accordingly. We say that it is the nature of the church that determines the structure of the church. Or, in other words, function follows form--how we are created is how God intends for us to conduct ourselves. These metaphors for the church are fellowship, family, body, and flock. A fellowship depends on harmony. A family depends on relationships. A body depends on created design or giftedness. And, the feeders of a flock are the leaders. All of those metaphors are very comforting pictures. A fellowship enjoys the company of each other. A family takes care of its members. A body is very united and cohesive with itself. And, a flock is protected and taken care of. All those things relate to the church taking care of itself, but let me remind you that these pictures can also be distorted to sickness. A fellowship turned inward is a cliquish club. A family that only relates to its own members is incestuous. A body that is only concerned with itself is selfish and immature. And a flock that only feeds and never breeds soon dies out. For a fellowship to really be worth being a part of it must be warm and inviting to newcomers--not exclusive. A family is about connecting generations before it and after it--not just about the isolated experiences of the present generation. A body is for interacting with the world and others--not just itself. And a flock provides milk, mutton and wool or there’s no reason to gather the sheep into a flock in the first place. A fellowship, a family, a body, and a flock have to be about more than themselves or they eventually cease being even themselves.
The church cannot exist for itself or it ceases to be Jesus’ body on earth. Jesus said...
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” [Mark 10:45]
Jesus said, “It’s not about me.” When He prayed to His Father in heaven, He said...
“I want your will, not mine.” [Matthew 26:39, Living Bible]
The first question to ask for a person or an organization is: What exactly am I supposed to be doing? “What is my business?” This is illustrated by an old story that comes from Europe. It happened during the construction of one of Europe’s great cathedrals. The architect of the grand cathedral visited the site during the construction process and walked up to a man who was mixing something. The architect asked the worker what he was doing, and the laborer said he was mixing mortar for the men setting stones. A little while later the architect saw another man doing the exact same thing and asked him what he was doing. The man replied, “Well, sir, I’m building a cathedral.”
What’s our business? What’s our purpose? We’ve been given our purpose by God.
“It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.” [Ephesians 1:11, the Message]
“For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible...everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.” [Colossians 1:16, the Message]
God’s purpose for His people, the church, is stated directly in each of the four Gospels and in the book of Acts, and stated indirectly all through the Bible. In case you somehow missed it, let’s read it again.
“Jesus said to his followers, ‘Go everywhere in the world, and tell the Good News to everyone.’” [Mark 16:15, New Century Version]
God’s purposes have never changed. At FCCHH we have personalized the statement of God’s purpose for us.
Our Mission
We exist to advance the Kingdom of God by taking Christ to the world and developing disciples for Him.
Get it? Good! There are other Bible metaphors for the church that describe our purpose. I want to mention 3 of them: Mission, Army and Enterprise. We have a Mission to carry out. We have a war to win, and we have kingdom business to conduct and conclude. Our purpose as a church is to...
Carry Out Christ’s Mission
In our experience, unfortunately, Christians have most often thought that missionary activity is for the spiritually elite. The regular Christians think they have done what they’re supposed to do when they attend, tithe, and follow. You know--show up, pay up, and shut up. The Christians who are a little above average get involved by teaching and volunteering in the church. The really good Christians take on responsibilities in the church like elders and ministry leaders. We think that the great Christians are the ones who become preachers and pastors, and then the spiritually elite become missionaries. The Bible actually informs us that originally, instead of the elite becoming the missionaries, the regular Christians were the missionaries of the church. Within the first few months of the church’s beginning in Jerusalem after Jesus returned to heaven, a wave of persecution caused the Christians to engage in a mass exodus from the city, and...
“...the Christians all became missionaries. Wherever they were scattered, they preached the Message about Jesus.” [Acts 8:4, the Message]
In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed to the Father for His followers...
“In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world.” [John 17:18, the Message]
A resource as non-religious as Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia in its article about the term ‘missionary’ says that “Christianity, (is) a missionary religion by nature...” If Encarta knows that Christianity is about being missionaries, shouldn’t Christians know that?
Jesus called His followers to be missionaries and planned His church to be a mission. We need to think, live and act like missionaries. Consider the missionaries to our continent before there was a USA. When the New World of North America was discovered by Europeans, missionaries were among the very first to explore what was here. This is how we got cities named St. Louis and San Francisco. Missionaries were taking territory for their church. Along the California coast 21 mission outposts were established by the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church. These missionaries went to a foreign land, established a stronghold and attempted to bring the people of the land into subjugation to the church. Their methods and spirit were wrong. Their purposes were probably wrong, too, but their theoretic model was right. Spiritually we must do the same thing.
The words ‘mission’ and ‘missionary’ come from root word meaning ‘send.’ A missionary is simply one who is sent. A mission is an organization or agency that has been established for a specific, outside focused, others oriented purpose. Jesus said...
“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” [John 20:21]
Christians are people sent by Jesus into the world to fulfill His purposes--not to please themselves, or to make sure they personally comfortable and successful. It’s Jesus’ work that Christians have been commissioned to do.
“He has given us the work of sharing his message about peace. We were sent to speak for Christ...” [2 Corinthians 5:19-20, Contemporary English Version]
We commonly think of missionaries as going to a foreign place as a minority constituency for an interim experience. Missionaries leave what they know, what they are used to and what they are comfortable with. They learn new languages, new cultures, and new customs--all for the sake of the mission and the ones to whom they have been sent. They do everything to tell the natives how to know God. The mission is never about the ones who have been sent. The mission is always about the ones to whom the sender sent them.
“Do the work of a missionary. Devote yourself completely to your work.” [2 Timothy 4:5, God’s Word]
The church is God’s mission to the world. We are either carrying out the mission or we are cutting it out of our minds. The purpose of the church is to Carry out Christ’s Mission and to...
Wage the Spiritual War
The Bible describes a follower of Jesus in a way that the church doesn’t talk about much today. We used to. I have a picture in my mind of a time in church when I was 6 years old. Our class was in a line marching around the room singing a silly little chorus: “I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery. I may never fly o’er the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s army.” It wasn’t just the children who sang about God in military language. A song in the hymnal had these words: “Rouse then, soldiers. Rally ‘round the banner. Ready, steady, pass the word along. Onward, forward, shout aloud Hosanna. Christ is captain of the mighty throng.” Even in public high school when I was a sophomore being inducted into the Key Club, we filed into the auditorium singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” We don’t talk much about it nowadays, but the Bible says we are soldiers in God’s army. I like that image. Christians are not just sitting around people. We’re warriors in a spiritual battle. We’ve got a war to win. We’re soldiers.
“Endure suffering along with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. And as Christ’s soldier, do not let yourself become tied up in the affairs of this life, for then you cannot satisfy the one who has enlisted you in his army.” [2 Timothy 2:3-4, New Living Translation]
There are a lot of characteristics of soldiers that apply to followers of Jesus. One of them is discipline. Another characteristic common to soldiers and Christians is the idea of recruitment. Christians, like soldiers, are signed up and take an oath to do a job.
In the same way the military today has suffered some of the same kind of misunderstanding of purpose that the church has. A fairly common attitude about the military is that it’s a good place particularly for a young man who doesn’t yet know what he wants to do with his life. It’ll make a man out of him, and it’s a good way to earn the benefits which can pay for a college education. Although it may happen and is probably necessary, the mission of the military is not to mature young males or to provide college education funds. The mission of the military is to fight a war should the occasion require it. They and their families might not like it very well, and they get nervous about it and when they signed up they hoped it would never come to this, but when military reserves are called up to active duty as they have been in Afghanistan and Iraq, they go because that’s what they’re in the military for.
It’s hard for cultured people to accept, but the business of war is to break things and eliminate the enemy. The purpose of the church likewise is to break the spiritual bonds imprisoning people and remove the enemy of our souls from the territory He’s taken away from God. The church has been recruited for spiritual warfare. We’re not just to be nice, easy-going people who get along with everybody and everything. We’re in a war.
“This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels.” [Ephesians 6:12, The Message]
Jesus recognized that the enemy of our souls is currently the god of this world. Not forever, of course. When Jesus returns that will all be changed and the Kingdom of this world will have become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. (Rev. 11:15) In the meantime Jesus has given us the mission to move into the enemy’s territory, establish a beachhead and from there by testimony and prayer to take that territory away from the enemy and return it to God. People are not the enemy. Satan is the enemy. The territory is not a plot of dirt. It’s the heart’s and lives of people trapped by the enemy’s lies. Our mission is to return their heart’s and lives to God. Jesus said that the gates of hell cannot stop that. Hell couldn’t stop Jesus at the cross or in the grave. Hell cannot stop Jesus’ people either. Nothing can stop the effect people have when they live on purpose for Jesus. No amount of darkness (no matter how concentrated) ever extinguishes light. It’s the other way around. Light always dispels darkness. This is how we take territory. We shine the light of Jesus we have in us on the hearts and lives of the people in enemy hands. The Bible says...
“God’s perfect children, who live in a world of corrupt and sinful people. You must shine among them like stars lighting up the sky, as you offer them the message of life.” [Philippians 2:15-16, Good News Bible]
Here is what happens when people come to know Jesus and receive Him into their lives.
“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” [Colossians 1:13]
When a person chooses Jesus, that person escapes the enemy’s territory and returns home to God. That life becomes God’s territory once again. This is the purpose of Christian: charge the lines of enemy territory and free people from his grasp by shining the light of Jesus on their lives so they can see the way back to God.
Do you understand that the church is an army? Let’s check that. You will know if you understand that by your answer to this question: How would you go about starting a new church? Maybe you’ve never thought about that before. If you suppose you’d try to find somebody who knows something about church, and decide where to meet and when, and what to do when Sunday came, your idea of church is a program not an army. The person who understands the church is an army would answer that question by trying to find out where there are people who don’t know Jesus and begin trying to figure out how to shine His light on them.
As the army of God the church is to Wage the Spiritual War, and it is also the purpose of the church to...
Conduct the Kingdom Business
In this age of corporate greed and unethical practices from Enron to Martha Stewart, the image of business seems far from the purposes of God. Regardless of the way people have conducted businesses lately, God says His church is like a business and He is a very concerned businessman. Many times Jesus said the kingdom of God is like farmers, merchants and fishermen. One of Jesus better known parables is the parable of the talents. He said God’s business is like a man going on a trip who gave his servants money to invest for him while he was gone. Two of those entrusted with quite a bit of money doubled their investments, but the person who had received only a little failed to do anything with what he had been assigned. He tried to excuse his irresponsibility as cautiousness regarding the boss’s demands, but Jesus indicated that the master had the right to expect results from even his little bit.
“You should at least have put my money into the bank so I could have some interest.” [Matthew 25:27, New Living Translation]
Jesus said the master called the cautious servant “worthless” and would take away the little that he tried to safeguard. Then he would be turned out to eternal darkness. That seems a pretty severe action over just a little investment, but it says how concerned God is about the church profitably using what He’s given us and not just keep ourselves safe with it.
God expects the church to be a spiritually profitable enterprise. He expects us to take risks and increase His investment with our efforts. He calls us the light of the world like a city on a hill. He expects us to be in the business of effecting the world for Him. We are in the world-changing business. God expects our world to be different because He has given us His resources to use for His purposes. The early Christians did it.
“These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.” [Acts 17:6, New King James]
God’s church is in the world-changing business--not in the conservative, tradition-guarding business. He expects us to make a profit for Him and increase His interests.
It is the purpose of God’s mission to convert the natives. It is the purpose of God’s army to conquer the enemy’s territory. And it is the purpose of God’s business to change the world.
I want to close with a very well-known story--most of you have heard before--which describes the tragic consequences of failing to fulfill God’s purposes for His church. This is the reason we have to keep the main thing the main thing--not just with words from the preacher on Sunday, not just with signs on the church house walls, but with action in the lives of all God’s people. This is the story of the life saving station.
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a little life-saving station. The building was primitive, and there was just one boat, but the members of the life-saving station were committed and kept a constant watch over the sea. When a ship went down, they unselfishly went out day or night to save the lost. Because so many lives were saved by that station, it became famous. Consequently, many people wanted to be associated with the station to give their time, talent, and money to support its important work. New boats were bought, new crews were recruited, a formal training session was offered. As the membership in the life-saving station grew, some of the members became unhappy that the building was so primitive and that the equipment was so outdated. They wanted a better place to welcome the survivors pulled from the sea. So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged and newly decorated building.
Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members. They met regularly and when they did, it was apparent how they loved one another. They greeted each other, hugged each other, and shared with one another the events that had been going on in their lives. But fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions; so they hired lifeboat crews to do this for them. About this time, a large ship was wrecked off of the coast, and the hired crews brought into the life-saving station boatloads of cold, wet, dirty, sick, and half-drowned people. Some of them had black skin, and some had yellow skin. Some could speak English well, and some could hardly speak it at all. Some were first-class cabin passengers of the ship, and some were the deck hands. The beautiful meeting place became a place of chaos. The plush carpets got dirty. Some of the exquisite furniture got scratched. So the property committee immediately had a shower built outside the house where the victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.
At the next meeting there was rift in the membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's life-saving activities, for they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal fellowship of the members. Other members insisted that life-saving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all those various kinds of people who would be shipwrecked, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. And do you know what? That is what they did.
As the years passed, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a place to meet regularly for fellowship, for committee meetings, and for special training sessions about their mission, but few went out to the drowning people. The drowning people were no longer welcomed in that new life-saving station. So another life-saving station was founded further down the coast. History continued to repeat itself. And if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of adequate meeting places with ample parking and plush carpeting. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.