Christ's mission, our passion?

TROWEL & SWORD

Rev. Brian Vaatstra

A number of years ago, we signalled our intention as churches to strengthen our focus on the mission of Christ by adopting the vision statement,
“A Church Reforming to reach the lost for Christ”.

At the last Synod we took a further step covenanting together to implement this vision by adopting the following fourfold task:

In submission to the Lord Jesus Christ and his command to make disciples of all nations:

a) To call upon God for such an outpouring of his Spirit that his people will be assured of his love through his Word, seek to please the Saviour in all things, manifest the godly life and be filled with prayerful and sacrificial compassion for the lost in all the world.

b) To enable local churches to expand numerically, equip and nurture their members, and become the mother-churches of as many fellowships and congregations as possible; and also to take further initiatives to create fellowships by penetrating structures of society with the gospel.

c) To multiply the number of well-trained persons (ordained, non- ordained, full time, part time, voluntary) lovingly dedicated to the creation and development of such fellowships and congregations by proclaiming the gospel.

d) To reform continually the life of the denomination (including our church ethos, customs, church order, use of resources, denominational committees, support staff and agencies) to encourage and enable the fulfillment of the fundamental aim.

These are wonderful statements of direction, but they will have absolutely no impact in the church unless they are acted upon in real and practical ways in the local church. Whose responsibility is it to do these things and build the church?

In the first place it is Christ’s responsibility. He says, ‘I will build my church.’ Our Lord Jesus Christ has given and is giving his all to build the church. He came and ministered in the world teaching us about God and showing us the way to be saved. He humbled himself, even to death on a cross making it possible for all people to be saved. He sent the Holy Spirit to impress this saving work on the hearts of men and women everywhere so that they might repent and call on the name of the Lord and be saved. Today, on the basis of his sacrifice for our sins, Christ intercedes for us before God’s throne of grace asking the Father to keep us and receive us. Christ who is the head of the church has and continues to give his all to build the church. To him belongs all the glory!

In the second place, Jesus invites and calls us to be engaged in His mission to build the church. In Luke 24:46-47 Jesus reminds his followers of the centrality of the gospel, 46 “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. But he goes on to tell them why the gospel is important, 47”and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” Jesus’ words in verse 47 reminds us that the gospel always calls us into mission. We not only need to receive the gospel (Jesus suffered, died and rose again for our sins and salvation), but we are also called to bring this gospel to the nations. Our mission as churches is Christ’s mission.

How should we be engaged in this mission in today’s world? The fourfold task we have adopted, gives us some positive direction for practical action.

Pray

Most obviously, we need to be in a place of dependence on God. The mission is his work. We will have no success unless God is working in hearts and lives, both ours, and the people we seek to reach. Prayer is therefore vital to the task.

Let us call upon God to pour out his Spirit to give us confidence in his Word, compassion for the lost, and a desire to live a godly life. These things must surely be prerequisites for the mission. We need to have a spiritual fervour and passion for God and the things of God if we are to be effective witnesses in the world.

Many of our churches have not had a tradition of coming together specifically for prayer. Yet, we see in Acts 1:21; 12:12; & 21:5 that this was a feature of the early church. Isaiah 56:6-8 teaches us that the congregation (‘temple’, ‘tabernacle’, ‘house’, etc) will be called a ‘house of prayer.’ This is not just referring to our Sunday services. It means that God’s people are to be engaged in prayer, in private and as a congregation. Charles Spurgeon calls the congregational prayer meetings the powerhouse of the church. Sunday mornings before each service prayer meetings were held which up to 700 people attended. He once said “Without prayer what are the church’s agencies, but the stretching out of a dead man’s arm, or the lifting up of the lid of a blind man’s eye? Only when the Holy Spirit comes is there any life and force and power.”

May our congregations be ‘houses of prayer,’ gathering often to pray, calling on God for an outpouring of his Spirit to enable and strengthen us for Christ’s mission.

Multiply

Secondly, the fourfold task calls us to be deliberately engaged with our culture so that we are reaching into our society with the gospel, and people are being added to the church. Mark Driscoll in his book, ‘Confessions of a Reformission Rev,’ calls this ‘Reformission.’ He says,

“Reformission begins with a simple return to Jesus, who, by grace saves us and sends us into reformission. Jesus has called us to, (1) the gospel (loving our Lord), (2) the culture (loving our neighbour), and (3) the church (loving our Christian brothers and sisters). When we fail to love the Lord, our culture and our church simultaneously, reformation ceases, leaving one of three holes: the parachurch, liberalism, and fundamentalism.”

GOSPEL + CULTURE – CHURCH = PARACHURCH

CULTURE + CHURCH – GOSPEL = LIBERALISM

CHURCH + GOSPEL – CULTURE = FUNDEMENTALISM

The only way out of these holes is repentance, which enables reformission. Through repentance, Christians and churches are empowered by the Holy Spirit to simultaneously love the Lord, love their neighbours and love their Christian brothers and sisters

GOSPEL + CULTURE + CHURCH = REFORMISSION

This means that we need to be engaging with people outside the church. Our church services ought not to be holy huddles, but authentic Christian communities into which outsiders are welcomed, and in which the gospel is proclaimed in a way that is relevant and addresses the issues of the day.

But the call of Christ goes beyond an attractional model of church. It calls the church out and into the culture. We need to be proactive in building relationships with non-Christians and taking every opportunity to introduce them to the Saviour we love, and who’s gospel calls them to repentance and faith.

Jesus himself connected with people both by attraction and purposeful engagement in their context. He often went into the synagogues drawing the crowds through his preaching. He and his disciples also went out among the people to bring the good news of the Kingdom to them where they were.

There is a growing desire in our churches to see people saved, and with it an increasing awareness of the need to engage with people in our Australian culture. We are learning to cast aside those traditions that have hindered the progress of the gospel, recognising that the only stumbling block we may put before people is the cross and it’s call to repentance and faith in Christ.

Let’s engage with the non-Christians around us. Join a bushwalking club, enrol in an adult education class, join a sporting club, run a playgroup from the church, or volunteer for meals on wheels. Make friends with non-Christians and when they ask about the hope you have, be prepared to give an answer, and invite them to explore Christianity through a short course such as Introducing God.

There is also a growing appreciation of the church-planting work our forebears did when they first came to this country. Church planting is again slowly being recognised as a positive, biblical way of reaching more people for Christ.

Train

Thirdly, as a denomination we have been thinking about the growth dynamic of our churches. It used to be Dutch migrants. Today the migrant growth dynamic only operates in those churches that have embraced South African migrants. The Adelaide, Sydney and Wonga Park congregations have grown wonderfully in recent years by welcoming our South African brothers and sisters. We praise God for their presence among us and look forward to partnering with them to build the church in their newly adopted country.

However, for most of our churches the growth through migrant intake has ceased, and where it has not been replaced with another growth dynamic, there has been decline. The Bible teaches us that there is a universal growth dynamic that all churches ought to adopt that will ensure the church will continue to grow, by the grace of God.

This is what the third element of the Fourfold Task is all about. It calls the church to discipleship including training and equipping the saints for the mission of the church. This is the universal growth dynamic every church needs. Christ himself calls us to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18) and the apostle Paul speaks of the same thing in 2 Timothy 2:2)

This means a broadening of the elders’ responsibilities (including the minister’s) to a more wholistic and biblical view of the role. The leadership of the church must take responsibility for equipping people to carry out the mission of the church, doing it not just theoretically, but demonstrating it practically. True discipleship is not just theory, but incorporates practice. Some of basic training we need to conduct in every church would include:

• Welcoming newcomers

• Teaching and preaching the Word
of God

• Presenting the gospel

• Leading a small group

• Ministry of the pew

• One to one discipleship

The basic aim of all training is captured well by the apostle Paul in Colossians 1: 28, ‘We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.’ Can you imagine what our churches would be like if they were filled with biblically literate, godly and well-equipped people ready to give their life to Jesus Christ in every day life no matter what vocation they’re in? Training is the biblical growth dynamic for the church.

Align

Finally, the fourfold task calls us to reform the life of our church. This is perhaps the most challenging element of our vision, and the most difficult because we all tend to resist change. But it will be necessary if we are to engage the culture and people around us with the gospel. We must resist being inward-looking, but rather seek to develop in our lives, our Lord’s great compassion for the lost, so that the love of Christ compels us into the world. It’s an ethos change, that by God’s grace we do see this happening more and more in our churches.

One practical way to reform our ethos is to network purposefully with like-minded Christians of other denominations. In the United States men such as Don Carson (Trinity College, Bethlehem Baptist) Tim Keller (Redeemer, Presbyterian), John Piper (Bethlehem, Baptist), Philip Ryken (Philadelphia, Presbyterian) Kent Hughes (College Church, Independent evangelical), and Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill, Independent Evangelical) and others have joined together as a network of ministers called The Gospel Coalition (www.thegospelcoalition.org). Their desire is to provide biblical resources via the internet that will assist the churches to place the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ at the centre of the church’s life and mission. They are keenly aware that many churches place peripheral issues at the centre, thus distorting both the nature and the mission of the church.

It would help us to continually reform ourselves to network with those pastors and churches that love the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and seek to be fully submitted to the Word of God in all things.

As a denomination, we have already been encouraged and blessed by our networking with Anglican leaders Peter Jensen (Archbishop), Philip Jensen (Dean of Sydney) and Peter Adam (Principal Ridley College, Melbourne), as well as with Presbyterian leaders such as David Cook (Principal of SMBC) and David Jones (Presbyterian Minister of Cornerstone). For myself and some other leaders in our churches we are thankful to God for their biblical and practical influence in areas such as preaching, ministry training, evangelism and church planting. By God’s grace, this networking has and continues to change the focus and ethos of our churches to being more outward, without compromising our wonderful reformed heritage. This has resulted in greater spiritual fervour and joy among God’s people.

Securing our gospel impact

The fourfold task we have adopted is a bold vision for the future. By God’s grace it will enable us to secure our gospel impact in Australia. It has many challenging practical implications for our churches today. May God give us wisdom as we seek to implement it in a way that builds on our biblical reformed heritage, and honours Christ in the mission of the church for today. We can say, as a great missionary once said, ‘the future of our churches is a bright as the promises of God.’ May God help us to serve him faithfully so that he is glorified in and through our churches.

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