Small Churches Big Mission
After six years, I still have the notebook that I had with all the different variations of a mission statement that I thought God was giving me to work with. After much prayer and sitting still and listening for the voice of God to direct me, I knew the direction and target people that we were to minister to in our church and community.
I looked up many other churches’ statements, trying to come up with something out of all of them. I had thought about bits and pieces from here and from there to try and formulate something. I saw many good mission statements, but none seemed to be ours. It’s because they were not ours, they were someone else’s. I started to think, how hard can it be to do this? I had to set back in my office chair and quit trying to find some other church’s statement to fit us. They are not us, and we are not them.
As I sit in the office, I began to ask myself two questions over and over. What are we trying to do? Who are we looking to do this with? As these two questions kept running through my mind like a looping recording, I took each and prayed and pondered on them.
What are we trying to do?
Who are we? What does God want to use us to do? What do we want this church to look like? What are we trying to do? All these rolled through my thoughts. I just had to relax and allow God to speak to me, this is when the process got clearer. I was trying too hard at first to come up with the answers to what we were trying to do. My thoughts went to the food ministry and then to the homeless and other people that we met. I was trying to see the forest through the trees. I was looking too specific. I heard in my spirit telling me to step back and take another look at what we were trying to do.
What we were trying to do, not just as a specific church, but as part of the bigger Kingdom of God? As I pulled further back, I was reminded that Jesus came as the Savior to restore us into a right relationship with God because sin had distorted the original image that God created us in. For God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Man was meant to be the representation of God on earth. We were not only to resemble Him but to have His character and attributes. Sin messed all that up. Sin twisted and distorted us so much that we could no longer look like God intended.
That was it! Our work here was to help people to be restored in the image of God. To direct them to the One who ultimately came and did the work of restoration. Paul teaches that we are to take the likeness of Jesus in our life more and more each day (Romans 6:11). This is who we are, and this is what we are to do.
Who are we looking to do it with?
Now that I understood what we were trying to do, the question of who we were trying to reach became much easier. Yes, we were already serving people that needed food assistance. We were helping homeless people find housing and dignity. But again, stepping back and looking at the whole forest again, I saw a clearer picture. A picture revealed to me that there was a common denominator, which was brokenness and hurt in people. At first, I was looking at the people that we served but I soon realized that all of us have some type of brokenness and hurt in all our lives. Whether it be the homeless couple needing housing, or the family trying to feed their kids. The teenager needs guidance in life choices or the wife dealing with a sick husband. People dealing with addiction. Broken relationships from separated couples to the child that has not seen or talked to their parents for years. There are broken and hurting people everywhere both inside the church and especially outside. So, there was our mission statement, “Restoring ‘the image of God’ to the broken and hurting.” This one line tells our whole purpose and goal. This is who we are and what we are trying to do.
Knowing what you want to say and saying it is a gift. "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." These are lyrics to the Beatles, George Harrison's song "Any Road." These words are as true in church leadership as in any other walk of life. Ministers must define and communicate a clear mission if the church is to be successful in fulfilling the vision that God gives a church. Vision and mission statements summarize the church's plan to fulfill the work set before them in a form that can be communicated and understood easily by the congregation.
A vision statement sets out a church's long-term goals and outcomes clearly and concisely. A vision statement is intended to inspire and motivate the church's body of believers by providing a picture of where the church is heading. It also provides a reality check for ministers and leaders, who can evaluate their efforts of ministry implementation to the fruitfulness of any ministry to the vision statement. If a planned course of action doesn't move the church toward its vision, it may need to be revised.
A mission statement defines the direction and purpose in which a church operates and sets out its key purpose. It summarizes what the church does and why. It also sets out how the church conducts its ministries and identifies key groups to be mistered for such as addicts, homelessness, hunger, single parents, and on and on. A mission statement helps congregants to understand where their contribution fits into the church’s objectives. It also helps other churchgoers decide whether they want to be part of this particular congregation or not. That is a sad truth but the truth is the same. Not everybody is cut out for the same thing and some people will not help the cause and can even hinder it.
We must first remember that the mission starts with the Lord of the harvest. It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world. We need to stop starting with the church and focus instead on God's mission. Instead of existing forms of the church providing the limits and the shape that the Christian mission can take, we need to deliver the part of God's mission to which each Christian community is called and let God's mission limit and shape our churches. The mission is not something we just decide to do but it is a response to what God is already doing around us. He calls us into His work, and we are the vessels and instruments that He uses to achieve His will in that particular community.
Understanding the mission is the first key to not only relating but conveying the mission of the church as a body and as Christians individually. To understand the mission, we must understand that Jesus came incarnationally, in the flesh. That he came and dwelt among men. We too as a Christian Church, need to be incarnational in the communities where we live. We must become flesh to our neighbors and to the ones that we meet. The Christian Church is to share the lives, the hopes, fears, pains, and joys, the culture, and the language of the people with whom God has sent us to dwell. The incarnational life means that church communities need to listen, understand, and fully enter into that complex cultural reality of the area and people to which God has called us. Therefore, churches that serve in their particular area have a mission that looks different than other churches in another part of the country or another part of the state. It can even look different in different parts of the same town or city. Churches that realize that revitalization is needed within their congregation must also realize that it includes a plan and strategy that includes the community of which they are part. There can be no true revitalization in a church that does not see the ones outside as an essential part of the future of the church.
A clearly stated mission must first start with an understanding that the work to be done is not a church-shaped mission but a mission-shaped church. A mission-shaped church in any context recognizes that the mission is not an add-on activity, rather, it is the reason the church exists, church is born through the mission. This mission always comes from God the Father, through the Son and the power of the Holy Spirit. This pattern is the pattern of the ministry of Jesus in His incarnation and dying to live.
Successful churches on the mission also understand the need to communicate the origin and value of their guiding mission. The stated mission is a clear expression of a church’s reason for being that defines its primary long-term goal and direction which often includes a plan of action for how to reach that goal. Missions is God finding those, whose hearts are right with Him and placing them where they can make a difference for His Kingdom. Some of the greatest missionaries ever recorded in history never lived long lives, but their lives so drastically changed eternity for so many others. God had full access to Phillip, and the book of Acts gives an exciting account of how God used Phillips’s life to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Phillip was preaching powerfully in the city of Samaria (Acts 8:5). So powerfully and mighty did God use him that the entire city of Samaria was rejoicing at the miracles God was doing through Phillip (Acts 8:6-8). Any evangelist would give their right arm to have the same results that Phillip had, to see an entire city responding to the gospel through his preaching. Yet Phillip was not activity-centered in his Christian life. He was God-centered. He was on a mission for God. Phillip was not preoccupied with expanding his reputation as a great preacher or miracle worker, he was concerned that his life remained at the center of God's activity. When he was instructed to leave his fruitful ministry in the city, he did not hesitate (Acts 8:27).
God continues to seek those who are as responsive as Phillip was, to go on missions with Him. The reason God has not brought a great revival to more places is not that He is unable or that He is unwilling. He first looks for those willing to have their lives radically adjusted away from their self-centered activities and placed into the center of God's activity around the world. Have you seen the activity of God around your church? What is God presently inviting your church to do? How is your church responding?
Some of the strengths and accomplishments of the missional Phillip is that he was one of the seven organizers of food distribution in the early church. He became one of the first traveling missionaries and evangelists for the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was one of the first to follow Jesus’ command to take the gospel to all the people in all the land. And he was also a careful student of the Bible who could explain its meaning with clarity to all that he met.
Phillip is a good example that God finds great and various uses for those willing to obey wholeheartedly to His call. Phillip shows that the gospel is universally good news to everyone. That the whole bible and not just the New Testament helps us understand more about who Jesus is. Phillip shows that both mass response, as in the Samaritans, and individual response, as in the Ethiopian man are valuable to God for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Sanctify the Lord God in your heart, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that you have in you, with meekness and fear (1 Peter 3:15).
You may never know when it will happen. You might be on an airplane, at the office water cooler, in the backyard talking to a neighbor, in church, or your children's room putting him or her to bed. There will be something whether it'll be your kindness towards them, the other person's need, an event in the news, or a family problem, that may prompt the person to ask you about your faith. Are you ready? What will you say? And how will you say it?
Questions about our faith may come in all kinds of varieties whether it be intellectual, ethical, or even personal, but at the bottom of it all, people want to know if our faith experience is rich and real and if it makes a difference in how we live. Man, did you get that! They are looking in you and, in your church, to see if they see anything different than they are seeing in the world and the crazy stuff that the culture has to offer. They are also looking for hope. They long to know they are loved, forgiven, and accepted by God, and they need someone to tell them that yes, it's true, God loves them too. Let us face the fact that the reason your church is needing revitalization is that somewhere along the way the church has forgotten that and stopped doing that. We need to repent and turn to the One that is the reason that we are who we are. Return to our first love (Rev. 2:4).
When the question is asked, it's too late to prepare our response and to prepare our hearts. We must get ready to answer the question by sanctifying Christ in our hearts, putting Him first, above all other affections. When our love for Him transcends everything else in our lives and even if we're actively struggling to love Him more than anything else, we are ready, and our words will reflect our heart, and authenticity is incredibly attractive to people. We don't argue people into the Kingdom, and we don't intimidate them into becoming God's beloved children. Peter reminds us that our demeanor should be with meekness and fear, realizing the awesome responsibility and privilege of communicating the light of the gospel to a darkened heart. This is a mission. Are you ready? If someone asks you about your faith today, what would you say and how would you say it?
How would the church be different if we were known for telling people about Jesus and His love as well as showing people what Jesus did with that love? The world sees the church as a minority with an agenda. What the world should see is the love of God expressed through faithful missional living. We must be able to defeat the notions that many people have as Mark Twain once reportedly remarked, “church is good people standing in front of good people and telling them how to be good people.”
In the eyes of too many Christians, involvement in evangelism and missions is a good thing. But for them, it is not necessary to be a believer or even for the church to be the church. Nina Gunner, former director of Nazarene Missions International stated, “if you take missions out of the Bible, there is little left but the covers.” the Great Commission is not an option to be considered, it is a command to be obeyed. Those who take scripture seriously understand that this Great Commission, also found in Mark 16:15, is the church’s Kingdom calling.
Where there is no mission, there is no church, and where there is neither church nor mission, there is no faith… mission, gospel preaching, is the spreading out of the fire which Christ has thrown unto the earth. He who does not propagate this fire shows that he is not burning. He who burns propagates the fire.”3 – Emil Brunner, theologian
God is a missionary God, one who seeks and sends to seek the lost. After the fall, Adam and Eve hid in the garden, scripture shows God looking for them. God is seeking today. If God's people want to be part of the mission, then they must see it as more than an option. We can read passages like Romans 1:14-16 that put the mission at the very heart of what the church is and does. If the church is to be truly the church, it must operate, as Paul said to the Romans, “by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey Him" (16:26).
