Almost two years ago I preached through our baseball diamond, which is our discipleship pathway from loving God to growing in Christ to serving the church and reaching the world. This message was part of the Reach the World series. As we wrestle with injustice in our society and acknowledge the pain felt by our brothers and sisters of color, it is important to remember our focus and calling as a church.
Jesus commissioned the church to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:18-20). That primarily involves proclaiming the good news of Jesus’ sacrificial death and victorious resurrection and the training involved in “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Alongside the proclamation of Jesus’ grace the church advances with a demonstration of Jesus’ love – loving one another and loving our neighbors.
“So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
Galatians 6:10
Our love for one another has a spillover effect. If we do well at loving each other in the church, some of that love will slosh over onto the other people God has placed around us. God is merciful and compassionate and the more we know Him and become like Him, His love should flow through us – first to one another and then to a hurting world.
The Lord leads us to do specific acts of kindness and mercy in the name of Jesus. We demonstrate His love to lost and hurting people, as we have opportunity. Pray for opportunities and the Lord will bring them along!
But our demonstration must always be in service to our proclamation. Think of acts of kindness as breadcrumbs leading to a feast.
Acts of kindness and compassion can be a wonderful adornment to the gospel. Our proclamation of God’s grace should be supported by a demonstration of God’s great love. The more we know God as a God of infinite love, mercy and compassion the more His character should grow in us and overflow through us to others. Breadcrumbs of love and mercy should regularly fall from our tables.
Hurting people are all around us, if we will just open our eyes. God is merciful and compassionate toward all people. He loved the world so much He sent His only Son to die for us all. Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted and to announce the year of the Lord’s favor.
“The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”
Isaiah 61:1-2
This was Jesus’ personal mission statement (Luke 4:17-19). Empowered and led by the Holy Spirit, He came to proclaim the good news of the kingdom to those humble enough to receive it. He came to bring the healing love and power of God into our dark and broken world. With His proclamation came the demonstration of love and the start of restoration. That restoring process will not be complete until Jesus comes back to renew all things in Himself.
But for now, believers are called to be salt and light, bringing the preserving, restoring salt of Jesus’ love into a broken world along with the truth of Jesus’ grace.
The bullseye for the church is Gospel-centered disciple-making: proclaiming the good news, training disciples of Jesus and building up the local church as a family that loves and serves each other well.
There is an element of restoration that individual local churches might get involved in – working for the King’s Justice in a certain area. But the church is not on a mission to change social structures. Remember, that’s what people wanted Jesus to do – and he would not do it. He did not overthrow Rome and become Emperor in place of Caesar.
I know some of us are interested in politics. Some are passionate about certain causes – and rightfully so. We fight for the life of the unborn. All of us believe in ending the modern slave trade in which boys and girls are bought and sold for pleasure right here in Tampa Bay. We are concerned for the vulnerable and want to help people make a better life for themselves. But as good as those causes are – it is not the mission of our church or THE church to fix them.
Some individual believers are called to give your lives to a cause like that. Praise the Lord for that! Go after it! God may have given you a passion for the unborn or a love for the orphan or a legal mind that can take on the political structures of the day and move the dial more toward justice. But the church must work to focus our energies on making disciples – and if we are as effective as possible at raising up passionate, fully devoted followers of Jesus, some of THEM will go out and bring more of the Kingdom to bear in this world.
Our mission as a church is to build up the church – to gather in believers FROM the city and train them to follow Jesus.
This is our first base: gathering worshipers. We call people to abandon their false gods of money, materialism and self and come to the One True God to give themselves fully to Him. But the church is not a museum devoted to COLLECTION – gathering an assortment of amazing people. The church is a training center for MOBILIZATION. We don’t gather just so we can gather, like a social club. We gather so we can go! We bring believers together for worship, fellowship, teaching and training so we can prepare and equip them to be salt and light in the world. We don’t want anyone stuck on first base – we want everyone moving forward, growing, serving and reaching out in the world!
We ARE the light of the world. And we are the salt of the earth. As we pray “Your kingdom come,” we should work to please God more and more with the world we live in.
God’s Design will not be fully restored in this world; but we can still work toward His Desires.
We should pray and work toward the Kingdom of Christ coming more fully into the business sector of Tampa Bay. We should pray that God’s will would be done more fully in the media (one reason we supported a Christian film like the Favorite). We should pray God’s blessings on families in our community and work toward strengthening marriages and fighting against pornography, strip clubs and prostitution, which destroy families. We should pray for those in government – encouraging young people to pursue careers in public service so that God’s desires would be more reflected in the public sphere.
We know this world is passing away. It is a tear down, not a remodel. But that doesn’t mean that we abandon the world and the people in it. God loves every single person on this planet. Every person you pass every day was made in the image of God and therefore has dignity and value and worth – especially to their Creator.
I hope this is helpful to clarify our calling. As a church, our mission is to make disciples – which is a SPIRITUAL purpose involving the transformation of individual lives. But as believers, God sends us out into different parts of the world, with different passions and abilities, to “let justice roll down like a mighty river.”