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The Mission of the Church PDF Print E-mail

Aligning Our Mission With God's

                                                   by David Parker

 

The mission of the church refers to the purpose of the church.  The church gets its purpose (or mission) from God.  The church can vote on its purpose statement; but it cannot vote on its purpose.  It is what God has appointed it to be, or it is not the church – there are no other options.


The church of the living God preaches the Gospel of salvation by grace through faith, baptizes believers, and teaches (or disciples) believers to continue in all the teachings of our Lord.  When a church ceases to fulfill this divine commission, it ceases to be the church.  Jesus declared that He had come to seek and to save that which was lost.  He was faithfully diligent in this endeavor throughout His earthly ministry.  His parting command to the church was that it continue what He “had begun to do and to teach” through the power of the Holy Spirit throughout the whole world.


Many churches today have lost sight of their divine mission.  They have occupied themselves with a preponderance of good and noble tasks while losing their focus of Jesus’ words in Acts 1:8, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”  When I was in the Army, we had what was called a mission essential task list (METL).  It was our stated mission accompanied by a list of respective training tasks which would contribute to the successful accomplishment of this mission.  Depending on the type or location of the military unit, it had a designated contingency of military operation (e.g., a desert environment).  All the preparatory training conducted by that military unit had to contribute to its operation in a desert environment.  If the training or activity did not contribute to the unit’s METL (or mission), it was discarded as irrelevant.


I believe the average pastor today sees his church as a local church with a missions program.  In other words, the church may consist of a children’s ministry, a teen ministry, a bus ministry, a music ministry, and a missions ministry.  In this paradigm, the pastor loses focus on the priority of mission and gives equal resources to each of these programs; consequently, the priority of mission is lost and relegated to just another program of the church.


If the church is going to keep the priority of mission as given by the Lord Jesus, the pastor and the church must recognize that the church is to be a global organism with a missions purpose – a global church with a missions purpose.  In this paradigm, the children’s ministry only exists to support and feed mission (Acts 1:8).  The teen ministry only exists to prepare teens to support and accomplish Acts 1:8.  All the programs or ministries of the church contribute to this unified cohesive purpose.  This paradigm highlights and keeps the main thing as the main thing.  It also promotes a clear understanding among church staff that although each may be working with a different segment of the church population, each share in the common priority of the church as directed by our Lord.


We must all realize that we have the capacity to deceive ourselves, gender a semblance of spiritual activity, and actually lose focus of our Lord’s work.  Let’s begin measuring the activities and the efforts of the church as to whether they contribute to the divine mandate to be witnesses unto the Lord Jesus Christ.  One day soon we will stand before Him and no amount of dexterous excuse-making will enable us to evade His eyes which are like a “flame of fire.”

 

David Parker

 
 

FLAMMABLE BYTES FROM THE FRONTLINES

When God's finger points, God's hand will open the door.

- Clarence Jones