Alpha

Alpha starts tonight!   Please pray:

• for the right people to show up
• for wisdom in leading discussions
• for deep community to form
• for the Holy Spirit’s presence to be evident!

Thanks!

Local Church, and getting involved

I’ve been very transient for the past several years.  On top of that, I was pretty involved in activities and ministries through college.  This has meant that for the past several years, I haven’t been able to really dig in to my local church body.  I was super involved in leadership and church activities all growing up through high school.  But due to lack of transportation, over commitment in other ministry areas through school, or instability in my location, I’ve been unable to really get involved in much of anything for a long time.

Well, since moving to Fayetteville, I have found a church that I’m excited to call “home.”  New Heights is incredible, and I got to go through a Discovery class last semester.  Well, today at church, I finally decided that I have no more excuses, and it’s time once again to start plugging in to a local body and getting involved.  And, to be honest, I’m actually kind of excited about this.  :)

This evening I attended a leadership meeting for Alpha.  I’m planning to be a co-leader for an Alpha small group on Sunday nights this semester.  Please be praying for me to grow in my skills as a small-group leader.  Also be praying that God will bring the right people to this course who are seeking answers about Christianity and need a place to openly express their questions and doubts.  We’re really praying for a lot of college students to attend.

Please pray also that God will guide me as I’m seeking Him on where and how to most strategically get involved in my local church community.  In the past I have been very over committed and burned out, and I don’t want to do that again.  I really want to be really invested in just a few things, and to do them well, rather than to have my hand in too  many things.  So pray that I will have wisdom to find those things that God is calling me to, and the courage to commit to them when I do find them.

Thanks!

Definition of Success: An Examination of the Church

The chief end of man
The Westminster Catechism states that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. For the sake of time and space, I’m just going to go with that to begin with. I will define “to glorify God” to mean “to reveal the character and nature of God; to enhance God’s reputation; to reflect God’s image.”

So, the purpose of our lives is to reflect the image of God so that He will be more glorified.

One of the core characteristics of God is that He is Triune. God is a community. What this means is that his attributes are best revealed in the context of community. So, really, a more accurate reflection of God’s image is a united group of people working together to glorify God.

So, to tweak this idea a little, God is most glorified when the united Church (all believers everywhere) seek to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

From which does God receive more glory: from one person reflecting His image, or from a massive group of people reflecting His image?

A simple analogy to illustrate the point: Which makes a more complete reflection, a pocket compact mirror, or an entire wall of mirrors in a dance studio?

So if our aim is to glorify God, and God is most glorified when more people reflect His image, then part of glorifying Him is to get other people to reflect His image. We want to increase the size of the mirror, so to speak.

This, then, is where evangelism comes in. We want to increase God’s glory by increasing the number of people glorifying Him.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative
But there is another aspect to increasing God’s glory. It increases when more people glorify Him, yes, but it also increases when the manner in which we reflect Him becomes clearer.
To extend the analogy: Which makes a better reflection, a dirty mirror, or one that has been cleaned with windex?

It is not enough for the body to be increasing quantitatively. It also needs to grow qualitatively. Beyond just evangelizing, making people aware of their need for a relationship with God, they need to learn how to live in light of this relationship. They need to be taught how to better glorify God in their everyday lives. This is commonly referred to as “discipleship.”

So, a quick recap. Man’s purpose is to glorify God, or reflect His image. We best reflect His image corporately, as the worldwide Church. And we need to be seeking to increase God’s glory both quantitatively and qualitatively.

The Church: Build Up, Extend Out
The Body (under the headship of Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit) builds itself up so that it can extend itself out. This means the Church is here on earth to do two jobs:
1. Build itself up
2. Extend itself out

Both of these points are supported throughout scripture. For the sake of space, I’ll share one verse for each:

From him [Christ] the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

–Ephesians 4:16

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

–Matthew 28:18-20

God has revealed in His word how He desires the body to be both built up and extended out. Since it is the issue in question, I’ll focus briefly on the “extending out” part.

If you take scripture as a whole, one of the main themes is clearly revealed: God desires to be worshiped in every people group. Here are just a few verses to back this up (there are many, many more)

The last part of God’s blessing to Abraham: “…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

–Genesis 12:3

“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

–Matthew 24:14

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

–Revelation 7:9

So, it is God’s desire for His glory to extend to the people groups where it is not. This is where the idea of getting the Gospel to unreached people groups comes from.

A Body, A Team, A Church
In your body, your hand does not have the same function as your eye. If it did, we would be able to see things, but we couldn’t pick them up. The same is true on a sports team. Each player has a different position or job. In soccer, the goalie spends his time defending his team’s goal, while the forwards are on the other side of the field, trying to score. But while all of these team members are doing different jobs, their end goal is the same: to win the game.

The same is true of the Church.

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.

–1 Corinthians 12:12

Each person in the Church has God-given talents, gifts, abilities, resources, and passions. And so for each person, when they use those things to build up and extend the Church, it will look differently.

The Great Commission was not given to individuals, but to the Church as a whole. This means that Jesus did not intend for Matthew, or John, or James, or any of the disciples to take the gospel to the ends of the earth by himself. Instead, He wanted them to be collectively involved.

The same is true today. If every person went overseas, there would be no church left to support and send out those who go. The New Testament, while filled with the chronicles of Paul’s journeys, also records that there were stationary churches living life and doing ministry in their own cities (Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch, Jerusalem, etc).

So, is everyone supposed to take part in fulfilling the Great Commission? YES, but not everyone’s job is to go.

Like I said before, the job of the Church is to build itself up so that it can extend itself out. This means that some people need to be involved in the building up. This is local pastors, teachers, and more than that, local lay people who show their children what living for Christ looks like in their every day lives. It is the business man who works ethically with his customers and remembers that his ultimate Boss is God Himself.

But people also need to be involved in extending out the church. Clearly, this includes locally, with our families, neighbors, and friends. But as I’ve already pointed out, there are people living in parts of the earth that have no opportunity to hear about Jesus, even if they wanted to.

This, I think, is the reason so many missions people make it sound like everyone needs to be a missionary to be in obedience to God. It is because far too few people consider this an option, while it is clearly a pressing need that is backed by scripture and God’s heart. The reality is, we are in no danger of too many people going.

But for those who have considered this option (I do think every Christian should at least consider whether God would have them go to share Christ with those have not ever had the opportunity to hear about Him) and have legitimately seen that God has a different role for them, by all means they should wholeheartedly pursue the vision God has given them. We are a Body, and each part has a different job.

So, What is Success?
I think it could be defined as this:

Success is living your life to bring the most glory to God, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

It is living your life in light of the bigger picture of what God is doing in the world–that He is drawing people from all nations to Himself, extending the boundaries of His Church, and that we can be a part of this through praying, giving, going, welcoming, or mobilizing. Teachers, bankers, lawyers, missionaries, factory workers, farmers, postal employees, military personnel, and nurses all qualify. We are all part of God’s global story, and we can all live our lives in such a way that we reflect God’s glory personally, and also extend His glory to those around us, and to those around the globe.