Last night I met with a group of about fifty people who are pulling out of a mainline denomination that has drifted far away from orthodoxy in order to start a new church in a solid conservative evangelical denomination. So far so good.
As the discussion unfolded I was pressed more and more into presenting how a mission church such as this can go about discovering God’s vision and developing the strategies to support such a vision. As always, I directed them to the Great Commission as the place to start for both vision and strategy. What should a church’s vision be? To go and make disciples. How does a church do that? It goes and make disciples. Why is common sense so uncommon?
I stressed the need to establish the criteria for decision-making and resource allocation by wrapping that criteria around the Great Commission. In other words, when major decisions or the distribution of significant resources is required, that choice should be made based on what? Based on whatever the Great Commission requires in that circumstance.
I pressed this group to make outreach and evangelism its priorities for ministry, avoiding the pitfall of ministry TO the congregation but embracing ministry THROUGH the congregation to reach a lost community.
At one point, a gentleman in the group interjected, “So what you’re saying is that we need a complete shift in our ministry paradigm; we need to completely change the way we do ministry?”
Bingo – he hit the nail on the head. But this morning as I was thinking through the meeting last night, I wondered, “Why it is that making the reaching of lost people the priority requires a paradigm shift?” What does this say about where the American church is today? What does this say about our true commitment to the Great Commission? If reaching the lost isn’t the priority, what, exactly, are we doing?
