[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. | Matthew 28.19-20
When people ask about the mission of the church, I feel pretty confident repeating the words of Jesus from the Great Commission above. The way that we describe this is:
Our mission is to introduce people to the gospel, baptize them into the church family, and to spend a lifetime conforming lives to the teaching of Jesus. Our mission is to love Jesus and make Him lovely. That does not and will not ever change.
However, the way that we do this does change. Our vision for the church bends and shifts with the people that God brings into the family and the culture He calls us to reach. Every year the elders take some time to craft some specific goals for the year and to align our schedule and priorities with it. This year, we believe that it is important for our church to embrace a COUNTERCULTURAL FAITHFULNESS. We are going to live out Christian values in a world that does not always respect them; we are going to become more confident in our faith as people try to undermine it. There are three areas that I want us to focus on as we do this:
TEMPERANCE
To be temperate is to stay grounded in the face of trial. As Rudyard Kipling put it (this is the first and last stanza of his great poem If):
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
This church has the opportunity to be this measured voice in a divided and divisive culture. As the loudest voices try to push people into a unhealthy binary (you are either this or that) the church can speak to truth of God an invite people into the paradox of being a Christian. To do this, we will continue to push back against the ditches on both sides of the road as we develop a worldview that both respects and rejects the various options that are given as a alternative to the gospel. We prioritize temperance because God is patient and true.
CONSISTENCY
We live in a time where it is all about movements and marches. People get obsessed with and excited about something they are going to forget about tomorrow. We need to be regular and faithfully consistent. Part of this is because if we aren’t our hypocrisy ruins our message; also, we will accomplish much more by simply keeping on when others quit.
To be consistent does not mean that we never fail. It means that failure (at not meeting our own expectations OR the ones laid out in God’s Word) is not a reason to quit. To trust in God’s sovereignty mean believing that He is in control when things seem like they are going well, and when they aren’t. In a disposable culture, we have gotten very used to committing to something when it is easy, and moving on from it when it isn’t. Church (and God) has become just one more thing to replace and move on from. We prioritize consistency, because we have a God who is steadfast.
COMMUNITY
When I presented this on Sunday, I used the word family here, but I want to expand that net a little further. As a church we have been blessed with families: foster families, people who have raised kids and are relishing in grandkids, people who haul a vanful to church every Sunday, and people with a heart to see God’s design of family used to create stability for the future. All of this is an important part of being stewards of what God has given to us. We must be responsible in the great opportunity to shine God’s LIGHT in how we parent, grandparent, and support family; I want us to see our church as a place to support one another in this.
We are also part of a local community that needs the gospel. We have been given numerous places to push back against the lies that preach absolute freedom and a rights-based approach to the world; we are called to use this witness to be SALT in a world that has lots its original flavor. We can look for places to be part of the fabric of our local community in ways that serve and build those adjacent to us in this journey.
Both of these (family and community) stress long-term commitment over immediate results. To invest in lives requires a generational view rather than an instant one. I want to see us as a church who invest in things that will last and leave a legacy (and take more energy and time to get there) rather than those things that require little from us to produce an outcome that is short. We prioritize community because we have a God who created a world of relationship that mirrors His relational character.
As your elders, we promise to be temperate and consistent and to do everything we can to support this community as it grows in COUNTERCUTURAL FAITHFULNESS.