Gospel-driven church (it's our only purpose!)

I am going up to Castlemilk tonight to wander round the streets and try and catch up with some of the young people who we know through the youth work that we run. This is part of us, as a church, saying we want ot be part of the community. The ongoing challenge felt by us, and I am quite sure that we are not alone in this, is how we impact the community on the doorstep of the church with the gospel in a meaningful way. So we come up with programmes and projects which are variably encouraging or disappointing and we strive with what we have to do what we can where we are.

I said in yesterday's post that the focal point at the start of the year is to be 'living for Jesus by living like Jesus' so the call to holiness of life, godly character, the fruit of the spirit as we seek to keep in step with the spirit- to get such a big view of God that other people might see Him in us. Last year our focus regularly was the idea that 'if we look after the depth, God will look after the breadth.' the idea behind this being that as a church, and in our leadership in particular, our commitment must be to oversee a deepening of people's relationship with Jesus, through clear proclamation and presentation of Christ in our services, valuing His Word, growing our small group ministry and anything else that would bear fruit in this regard.

What's all this got to do with reaching our community. Sometimes we can get so hung up on defining our community as a church that it can chop and change more than a Glaswegian electoral ward boundary. Our community is where our people are, who they rub shoulders with, work with, hobby with, school, college, university with, queue at the job centre with, live next door to. We need to be training our people to be missionaries in this culture that we are called to reach with the good news about Jesus. I noticed that Liam mentioned the Bereans a while ago- all pastors love the Bereans and they want the Bereans in their congregation and that is a good ambition and desire. In the mission that we are called to we all want Bereans, people who will turn to the word at the drop of a hat to see if what we say is true. I am intrigued by the fact that Berea is found in Acts 17 and followed up by the account of Paul's time in Athens. You see we all want Berea but in reality we find ourselves often in Athens. Instead of searching to see if what we are saying is true, we hear them muttering to themselves 'what is this babbler trying to say?'

That is why we want to take very seriously our responsibility to deepen people's relationship with God in the most doctrinally illiterate generation since the Reformation so that when they encounter a Berean they can respond- and we believe that God honours faithfulness with fruitfulness by providing breadth to ministry that is built on deep foundations. It is also why we take seriously our responsibility to call people to live like Jesus in front of a watching world so that they might not get what we say at first but that by our lives they might be persuaded to give us an opportunity to give a reason for the hope that we have.