Becoming the Church That Reaches Your Neighborhood

Question: What is the mission of the church?

Question: What is the mission of the church?

Question: What is the mission of the church?

Answer: The mission of the church is to carry out God’s mission, and God’s mission is to redeem the world.

“It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission” – Christopher Right, The Mission of God, p. 62

If you want to become the church that reaches your neighborhood your church must understand that it doesn’t exist to carry out its own mission, but it exists to carry out God’s mission.

And when churches do not understand the difference, we become what we call inwardly-centered churches and it prevents us from becoming the type of churches that reach our neighborhoods. An inwardly-centered church is a church

You know you are growing inwardly-centered when...

The budget

When the church begins to function more as a spiritual country club than a church.

When your model of church is designed to reach unchurched people.

“You can say you want to reach people all day long. You can teach about it every week. But if you haven’t designed your church around ministering to people who don’t go to church, you might as well be preaching that you want to lose weight while eating a triple cheeseburger.” - Carey Nieuwhof

The pastor

So Why Is This So Important?

So when we talk about God’s mission, I am thinking of all that God is doing in his great purpose for the whole of creation and all that he calls us to do in cooperation with that purpose?

Question: How should the church relate to culture?

Andy Crouch, Culture Making Some ways the church responds to culture:

1. Condemning

2. Critiquing

3. Copying

4. Consuming

5. Creating

6. Cultivating

“If we believe that God is still on the move in human cultures, then our most basic questions have to be, What is God doing in culture? What is his vision for the horizons of the possible and the impossible? Who are the poor who are having good news preached to them? Who are the powerful who are called to spend their power alongside the relatively powerless? Where is the impossible becoming possible?” Crouch, Culture Making p. 214

Inwardly-Centered Evaluation

· What percentage of your budget is spent on operations what percentage is spent on

· Churches become spiritualized country clubs where members pay dues and are thereby given certain privileges.

Evaluate your budget

Evaluate your calendar

Evaluate your pastor’s time

Evaluate the time of the few laborers

Evaluate your ecclessiology (what you think the mission of the church is)

(ESV)

10 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. 2 And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ 6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. 7 And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. 9 Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

Good Samaritan

– Social Gospel

Observe

What might God be doing in this community or what might God have a heart for in this community? Based on this information, comment on what you see to be the opportunities and challenges in this context for participating in God’s mission and proclaiming the gospel in word and deed.

LISTEN

Questions for the Community

1. How long have you been living in the community? What is your most memorable time living in this community?

2. How has this community impacted or served you? What happened?

3. What do you or your family participates in the community? School? Volunteer? Gym? Work? Athletics?

4. How have you seen the community develop to benefit you or the community as a whole?

5. What do you think is essential or makes this community unique? What are some places that you love to go eat in the community?

6. If you could make three wishes for the future of the community, what would they be and what would the community look like?

Andy Crouch, Culture Making –on power, idolatry, and Sabbath

• “Sabbethlessness is idolatry. Instead of remembering, enjoying and celebrating the goodness of the true God, we make ourselves gods, pressing ourselves to ever greater feats of self-sufficiency, and doubtless lapsing, exhausted, into slothfulness when our busyness overwhelms us. All idolatries, left unchecked, end up consuming us. A sabbathless life ends up with neither true work nor true rest, but with frantic and ineffective activity punctuated by couch-potato lethargy. Remembering the sabbath, then, is one of the basic disciplines of power. Only sabbath keepers can be trusted with the work of image bearing.” 116-117

Question: When we look at our church’s calendar, are we carrying out our mission or God’s mission?

Experiment?