A girl returning home from Sunday School expressed
disappointment with the class’s reaction after the day’s lesson.
She said, “We were taught to go into all the world and make disciples
of all nations, but we just sat!”
I would like to invite you to pray about something with me and reflect
on the meaning of it for our church mission. I am not one to merely
look at attendance and membership numbers to judge the vitality
of a church. Jesus’ own ministry would have been a dismal failure
with the guidelines we use today. He did not grow by 25% every year.
In fact he attracted a rather large following and then dwindled
the group down to a much smaller group. Yet, we would never say
he was stagnate. So how do we judge the basis of vitality and true
growth?
Let me offer some words from Tom Bandy who once said, “where you
are going is more important than where you’ve been.” He goes on
to say, “Friends, here is the secret to church growth: Get a mission!
That’s it. Beyond that single thing, you can do whatever tactic
works to help you achieve that mission. If traditional worship works,
do it. If your location and property does it, maintain it. But if
it doesn’t, change it. And stop arguing about it. Stop trying “to
have your property and your mission too.” First the mission…always
the mission…and your church will grow again.”
He got me thinking. We are on mission not in order to grow, but
because Jesus commissioned us to be on mission. We need to be asking
what our real mission is as a church. I agree that we need to learn
to think about all that we do from the perspective of our mission.
If it creates new numbers, that is great. If not, so be it. But
the thing is we are called to be on a mission.
So once again, I am reminded of our mission statement. We are a
community of faith in Jesus Christ seeking to understand our vital
connections to God, to one another, and to the world around us.
Mark
