Every Christian will tell you, it is important to evangelize. And a church worth the name will tell you at least on paper that their mission is to reach the lost to the glory of God. However, saying is one thing and doing a completely different matter. There is a reason the scriptures urge us to be doers of the word and not hearers only (James 1:19-22), we are a people whose lips and lives often do not match. So the last few weeks i have been doing some soul searching and asking myself whether we are really an outreach minded church. This reflection lead me to ask the question, what does an outreach minded church look like. I jotted down a few practical signs of a church that is outward looking.
Knowledge of the gospel
Such a church will know the gospel. They will know the facts and person of the gospel. They will know the true gospel. They will believe in the gospel as God’s only means to salvation to all who believe. One of the reasons people do not share the gospel is because they do not know the gospel and do not truly believe in its saving power. A church that is grounded in the truth of the gospel and its power will proclaim it to others.
Pursue Holiness
One result of knowing and believing the gospel is that you become a new creation. You were once dead in your sins and your very nature was sinful but by the grace of God you are radically changed and transformed. If Christians are to have an effective outreach ministry in their communities, the transforming power of the gospel must be clearly evident. You really cannot call people to repent and forsake their sins when you have not done so yourself. That is pure hypocrisy. An outreach minded people pursue holiness.
Interest in the lost
We love our holy huddles and clicks in our church. And it is absolutely imperative that we meeting with other believers and building each other up. However we need to have meaningful and intentional gospel relationships with non-believers. Notice that it is “intentional gospel relationships” meaning the purpose of relating with them is to share the gospel. That also means we do not wait for them to come to us, we actually go out to them. To be outreach minded is to love the lost.
Follow up of visitors
One result of having interest in the lost is that we will be diligent in welcoming, hosting and following up visitors. How often do we have visitors and they simply fall through the cracks? How often do we have to crank ourselves to welcome and host visitors? And when get round to hosting them it is rather mechanical. Brethren we have a glorious opportunity to show Christian love when we have visitors. We should show genuine interest in them, cheerfully greet them and even give them information they might find helpful. We can show hospitality by inviting them to our homes for meals and follow them up afterward. It is one thing to offer juice to someone when they have visited it is a different level of commitment to follow someone wherever they stay. An outreach minded church diligently follows up its members.
Giving and using of resources for the furtherance of the gospel
As you engage in outreach, you will soon discover that it will demand of your time, your energies, your possession and your money. While the first two are often obvious and easy to part with the last two quite hard to part with. But outreach will at one point or the other require that you use your home and your food as you host people, it might require that you give up or use your car and fuel to pick people or visit them. Outreach will also require that you give money to support the various outreach activities that the various ministries of the church might have. A church that is outward looking gives generously.
Ministry involvement & use of gifts
The best platform we have to reach out is through the ministries of the church. Church ministries give every member an opportunity to use their gifts to build believers and reach out to non-believers. Those who are zealous about reaching out will do so in the context of the ministries of the church. There is a reason the church is called a body of Christ. A solo Christian is like a part of the body lying in the street on its own. It is a rather disturbing site! An outreach minded church will have full ministry participation from its members. Members who are not using their gifts in the ministries of the church are missing out on an opportunity to reach out to the lost.
I pray God may grant us the heart and perspective of our savior the Lord Jesus Christ who when seeing the lost, he was burdened for them and indeed laid His own life for their sake.
Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.“Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” Matthew 9:36-38
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