IS YOUR CHURCH MERELY AN INEXPENSIVE SOCIAL CLUB OR A SOUL SAVING STATION?k

As I read Luke 24 this morning I realized that it is so easy for us to get caught up in good things like learning, teaching, doctrine, reading about sound doctrine, understanding sound doctrine.

Sometimes we get caught up in good things like worship, singing, praising God, listening to Christian music. We get caught up in the good things of fellowship, being together, sharing our lives together, enriching one another, ministering our gifts to each other, comforting, encouraging one another. We get caught up in prayer.

We get involved in Christian service of all kinds for the sake of the advance of the church. We pursue holiness in our own lives.

And all these things are commanded of us in Scripture, but none of them is the goal. All of them are simply means to the goal; and the goal is to proclaim the Gospel and call people to REPENTANCE. We are living in a kind of life that will make the message of the gospel believable, that’s why we have all of these components.

Scriptures tell us how to fellowship.

Scriptures teach us doctrine.

The Scriptures tell us how to worship, how to obey, how to be holy, how to serve, how to pray.

That’s never the goal. That’s never the end. Your spiritual growth is not the end. It is not the goal; it’s not the objective.

So if you do all of those things, but never proclaim the gospel, you have forfeited the purpose for which all the others exist.

The true church isn’t merely a mission department, the true church is a mission. You’re not chosen or elected to be members of a mission committee, you’re a missionary; it’s just a question of where, and how effective or how ineffective.

There is no escaping this. There is no gift of evangelism. There is no gift of missionary. We are all responsible for this. The church is composed of missionaries, the church is a mission in the world.

The world is an alien culture, and we are here in a foreign land. We are citizens of heaven, we are left here; but our citizenship is there.

We are left here, because there’s one thing we can do here we’ll never do in heaven and that is evangelize the lost. So we’re all missionaries.

To sum up, Luke 20: 46-47

46 An he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47and that REPENTANCE for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

48 You are witnesses of these things.

Ps Are we merely petting sheep, or looking for the lost sheep?