A Call To Refocus

One of the greatest stories in American history is the story of Helen Keller. Helen Keller was born in 1880. Normal health. When she was 19 months old, she had what doctors then called brain fever. What most doctors now think was probably either scarlet fever or meningitis. The resulting illness left her both deaf and blind. Her family struggled with how to deal with that. They pretty much just let her run wild through the house. And until she was age seven, when she was introduced to the miracle worker as the book and movie call her, Ann Sullivan, the woman who came and began to open up her mind and heart and reestablish connection between Helen Keller and her world began to teach her sign language and to understand what those words meant and those letters meant. It's a fascinating story, chronicled in the book The Miracle Worker and the movie by the same name. Helen Keller is a tremendous inspiration because she overcame all of those odds to grow up to be a political activist, particularly on behalf of those who were disadvantaged and those who were denied basic services in our culture because of handicaps. She became a lecturer and author, great story. Helen Keller once said this. She said, the saddest thing in the world is people who can see but have no vision. Saddest thing in the world, people who can see but have no vision. I'd like to tweak that statement just a little bit for our purposes here this morning as a church. I would like to say that I believe the saddest thing in the world is a church that is called by God to represent Him on this earth to show the world who God is, but just exists with no purpose, no direction, no vision. Would you agree with me that we don't want our church to be like that? I think I would agree with Helen Keller that vision is more important than sight. Now I'm not here to condemn or accuse or say that we have no vision, direction or purpose. I think there's a lot of that here and I think even the ball has been moved forward some by the pastors in the time that I've been away and so I am grateful for that. But it is possible for a church to not have the clarity and focus of vision and direction and purpose that it needs to really know what God wants it to do. It's also possible to have that and then it get a little fuzzy and a little unclear. Twelve years ago we did a lot of work on this very subject here at Johnson Chapel. And we tried to focus upon what we believed God said the purposes of the church were and we were crystal clear about what we needed to do and where we needed to go. A few years later, at least in my heart and mind, that had gotten a little fuzzy and unclear. And so I'm hoping that maybe everybody here still has that that purpose and that direction and that vision clear in your mind. If you do, then over the next few weeks please let me catch up with you a little bit. Let me get on the same page with you, but if not let's all get on the same page together and I want us to focus once again. Refocus. I'm issuing a call this morning to refocus on what God says the purpose of the church is. Why we are here in this world. What we are to be and what we are to do. So I'm issuing a call this morning to get real focused, to refocus on what we're supposed to be and do. Let me define a few terms that we're going to use in this series of messages which will go for another five weeks or so. We'll talk some about purpose. We define that word purpose as the reason or reasons why we exist. The purpose of the church really is what the Bible says we are to be and to do. The reasons why we are in existence. What we're to do in this world. That's our purpose. Then we'll use the word strategy some and the word strategy means specific steps for accomplishing those purposes. In other words, we have purpose we have a clear idea of what the church is supposed to be. Now how are we going to do that in our setting in Princeton, West Virginia, in our culture and then from here throughout the world? What are the specific steps we will do to accomplish those purposes? That is strategy. Then we'll use the word vision. Vision is an overall picture of what the church will look like when it is fulfilling its purposes. In other words when the purposes are working right and it's not the purpose is working right as much as we are carrying out what God says we're to be and do. When we're doing that then the church will look a certain way and that's the vision. That's the vision. Now what we want to do is we want to look ahead to see the vision of what the church can and should be because of the purpose as God gives us and that's the target we want to shoot for. That's what we want to be. That's what we want to do. So it's time to refocus and I call us to refocus this morning on the five biblical purposes for the church. I want to remind us of those this morning and then over the next five weeks we'll take them one at a time and flesh them out a little bit biblically and find out how we as a church can do them. Would you look with me first at Matthew chapter 22? We're going to focus first of all upon two clear passages. Two clear passages. The first of those is in Matthew chapter 22, a passage which is often called the great commandment. The great commandment. Now let me set the stage for what's happening here so that we really get the importance of the question that is posed to Jesus and how he responds to it. We're in the last week of our Lord's life and each day as he goes into the city of Jerusalem he's teaching in the temple during the last week of his life. The religious leaders and political leaders are frantic. They are desperate to try to discredit him among the people and so they keep pushing forward representatives of the different groups in Israel to ask him questions that they hope will trip him up either making him unpopular with the crowd or discredit him because of a bad answer or maybe even get him in trouble politically with the Romans and they can have him arrested. They're looking for some way to discredit Jesus and so first of all the Pharisees and the Herodians get together. Two parties on polar opposite extremes of the political spectrum. The Herodians were pro-Rome. They loved Rome. The Pharisees were the fundamentalists of the religious landscape of the day. They hated Rome and you know they got together on this issue and posed this question to Jesus about paying taxes to Rome. Imagine those two widely separated political parties getting together on that question of taxation. Is it right to pay taxes to Rome? Well Jesus answers in such a way that completely silences them and they kind of shrink back into the crowd. Then another group comes forward. The Sadducees. The Sadducees were the religious liberals of the day. They didn't believe in the supernatural. They didn't believe in miracles. They didn't believe in the afterlife. They didn't believe in the authority and inspiration of the Old Testament, the whole Old Testament. They didn't believe in the resurrection and so they come with their attempt to ensnare Jesus in a question they think will trip him up and their question is we had a man who married a woman and you know the law of Moses says that if a man dies without a child his brother is to marry the woman and so that any children born will stay in the family name. So this guy had six brothers, so seven of them in all and she outlives all seven of them. All seven of them ended up marrying her and dying and so their question is whose wife will she be in the resurrection? That's not the question I'd be asking. I mean I'd be asking what she's putting in the beef stew. That's what I'd be asking. I mean that seems logical to me that that would be the question but that's not the question they ask. They ask whose wife will she be in the resurrection trying to discredit the whole idea of the resurrection and Jesus once again masterfully answers them in a way that the Bible says silences them. So the Pharisees get together and they say okay let's try again and they put someone else forward and here it is in verse 34, their next question. Verse 34. Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him. Notice that they tested him with this question, "Teacher which is the greatest commandment in the law?" You see they had figured out by counting all the commandments in the law of Moses there were 613 of them and the different rabbis among the religious landscape constantly argued over what was the greatest commandment. So they're testing Jesus by trying to get him to take a position. Well I favor rabbi so and so or rabbi so and so I take this view that view of what's the greatest commandment to discredit him maybe among a huge majority the populace. And so Jesus says okay guys what I'm going to do is I'm just going to give you a summary of all 613 commands in two. In fact, I'm going to give you a summary of everything God teaches in the Old Testament. Everything he expects of his people in the Old Testament summarized in two commands. This is the Cliff Notes version of the Old Testament. Here it is verse 37. Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. What he's saying there is everything taught in the Old Testament is summarized in those two commandments. You fulfill those two commandments you'll do everything God expects of you. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, love your neighbor as yourself and you might be thinking well that's just summarizing the Old Testament. That's what God expected of Israel, right? That doesn't have anything to do with us as a church, right? Wrong, because Paul says in the book of Romans both of these same two things. In Romans chapter 12 and verse 1 Paul says therefore I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy pleasing to God this is your spiritual act of worship. Now in a moment we're going to flesh out a little bit more what it means to love God but that's exactly what it means right there. When we look at the word love we will find that it means an all-out surrender of everything you are to God that's what worship really is and so what Paul is saying is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind same things Jesus said when he says surrender everything you are like laying your life on an altar like a sacrifice that's loving the Lord your God that's the first commandment. Second commandment Paul says is equally valid for the church in Romans chapter 13 where Paul says this. Let's look at this verse- Romans 13, verse 8. Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another. Now notice what he says- for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law the commandments do not commit adultery do not murder do not steal do not covet whatever other commandment there may be are summed up in this one rule love your neighbor as yourself and he closes out by saying love does no harm to its neighbor therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. It's interesting that Paul takes that second commandment that Jesus talked about love your neighbor as yourself and he says that encompasses everything in your relationship with others. Surrender like a living sacrifice that's loving the Lord your God. Loving your neighbor as yourself. Paul says both of those are still valid summaries of what God expects of his people in New Testament times, the Church. So the great commandment this is basic this is foundational this is what God expects of us. Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. The second of the two great passages is Matthew 28. So look over at Matthew chapter 28 a passage that is often called the great commission. So we've got the great commandment now the great commission, Matthew 28. Let's begin in verse 18. Then Jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you and surely, I am with you always to the very end of the age. This is a crucial meeting with his disciples. Jesus announced this three times ahead of time. In the in the upper room the night before he died he told his disciples I'm going to meet with you on a mountain in Galilee after the resurrection. They still didn't fully comprehend it so on the day of the resurrection when the angel appears to the women at the tomb he says go tell my disciples to meet with me on a mountain in Galilee and then when Jesus himself interacts with Mary Magdalene, here's the third announcement, he says go tell my disciples there to meet with me. Three times he announces this, which by the way is a biblical precedent for announcing things over and over again. You never get it till the third time. So Jesus announces this three times. What he's saying is don't miss this meeting, it is critical, it's crucial that you be there. I want to highlight the importance of this meeting. Why? Because this is where he's going to give the disciples their marching orders for the church. This is what the church is to do and he gives three things here- go and make disciples of all nations baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you. So that great commission becomes the second summary statement of what God expects of us. We must be committed to these two great passages which describe what God wants us to be and to do because in these two great passages we have listed for us, if you will, Jesus gives us five great purposes. In these two great passages there five great purposes. Let's look at the five clear purposes. Back in chapter 22, the first one is in verses 37 and 38. Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind. That is the purpose of worship, the purpose of worship. Now when Jesus says love the Lord your God he uses the strongest word for love. It's the Greek word agape and has more to do than just with feelings. He's not saying have a certain feeling toward God, feel very close to God, feel very good about God. It's not saying that. The word agape is a word which means commitment and the best word to summarize it is surrender. Agape love means you surrender yourself for the good of another. It's the same word that Paul uses for a husband loving his wife. It means that you surrender your desires, your agenda, your plans for her welfare and her benefit. That's the kind of selfless, sacrificial love we're to have for our wives. That's the kind of love Christ had for us, that God had for us. God so loved (agape) the world that he gave his only begotten son. It's always a selfless, giving love. That's what we're to do. When Jesus says love the Lord your God, He's saying surrender yourself for his good, for his glory, and notice how he describes it. Surrender to the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. That's the whole inner person, heart soul and mind, the inner person. It means that I am to surrender my intellect to God, I'm to surrender my thought processes, bring every thought into captivity to Christ as Paul would say in 2 Corinthians 10. It means that my attitudes, my ability to reflect and just think about things should be geared toward godly purposes and surrendered to Him, not towards sinful purposes. So I love him with all my mind. I'm also loving with all my emotion. That's a part of my inner being and that means that I surrender all my emotion to Him. You see, loving the Lord your God means that you bring all your joys in life and lay them at his feet. You surrender them to Him. Anything you have joy in or rejoice in you lay at his feet so that it's pleasing to Him. It also means you bring all of your pain and sorrow to Him, and you lay it at His feet to find comfort, healing for your heart, but also to surrender them to Him because if you don't surrender your pain to Him then it ends up turning inward. You begin to nurse it. You develop bitterness and resentment against others and maybe even against God. So loving Him with all your heart and mind and strength means all of your mind, all of your emotions are surrendered to Him. It means all of your will is surrendered to him so that every choice, every plan, every purpose and deeper motivation of your heart, is surrendered to Him, it's laid at His feet. That's what it means to love the Lord your God. It's a surrender of everything you are to Him, your thinking, your emotion, your intellect, your will, and Mark adds something else. Mark says love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So that's all we do, not just all we are on the inside but all we do, all of our action and activity, all of our influence, all of our words. Everything we do is surrendered to Christ and that's what it means to love Him. That's an act of worship, to bring everything we are inside and out, our thoughts, feelings, direction, purpose of life and everything we do and say, and surrender all of that, lay it at His feet. That's the ultimate act of worship. You see, folks, when we gather together in church like this, in corporate worship, that's what we're supposed to be doing. If you come to church and just sit in a pew and occupy a place and sit like a bump on a log, and just kind of sit there and endure it, and then walk out, you have violated the first commandment, the greatest commandment, which is to come together to lay everything at His feet. Everything you are, everything you have, everything you desire, everything is laid at His feet in surrender. That's what our worship is about. So that's why when we sing, singing is just an expression of that surrender. So when you sing these great songs like we saw this morning, like we were involved in this morning, those songs just help your heart in that act of surrender of saying I only have two hands one heart. It's all I have, but I bring it to you, and I surrender it to you. That's loving the Lord your God. So that when we pray, we're not just passing the time of day. We really are surrendering our will to His and we're asking for His will to be done. We're loving Him, we're worshipping Him. So that when we give, it's just a reflection of our awareness that everything we have belongs to Him and we give back a portion of it, but it's all his and we surrender it to Him so the act of giving becomes an act of worship. It becomes an act of loving the Lord your God. So that when we give attention to the Word and we hear what God says, and then we say we're going to go out and do what God says, that's a surrender of our will, of our life, of our passions, of our intellect to the Word of God. That is worship. That's what we're supposed to be doing here. It is taking advantage of these opportunities, these means to an end, that help us focus in surrendering to God and loving Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. That is worship, but it goes beyond public gathering. We need to be developing those disciplines of worship in our daily lives so that we are daily, constantly surrendering to Him, loving him with all our heart soul, mind and strength. The first great clear purpose for the church is worship, worship. And we want to do all that we can to make these corporate gatherings times when we do lead you and all of us into the presence of God in a real sense of surrender to Him. Worship. The second clear purpose in this passage is the purpose of ministry. Verse 39- And the second great command is like it- Love your neighbor as yourself. You see, we demonstrate our love and God's love to others when we meet the needs of other people. To love your neighbor is to reach out and meet a need that that person may have. It may be a spiritual need, it may be a physical need, it may be an emotional need, it may be a relational need, but we demonstrate the love of God and we love our neighbor in action. It's through ministry that we love our neighbor, not just by what we say. We love our neighbor through what we do by our actions. That is very clear in the New Testament. Look at this verse- Mark chapter 9 verse 41. Look at this verse on the screen. I tell you the truth, Jesus said, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward. Now there are a lot of people doing that in Haiti right now and we're asking our church to become involved in Heaven Sent to enable that to happen more in the name of Christ and demonstrating the love of Christ by giving a cup of water or some food, a meal, to people. Those are very real needs right now and we can do that in the name of Christ, and Jesus says when you do that, I mark that down in heaven. There's a reward for that. The Bible also tells us along the lines of ministry that we are all to be involved in ministry. Look at Ephesians 4 verse 12. It'll be on the screen for you. This is what God's pastor-teachers are to do who are mentioned in verse 11. We are to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up. It is our job and part of a biblical philosophy of a church is that it is our job as pastoral staff to equip all of you to serve Christ. It's an unbiblical philosophy of the church that you pay professional staff to do the ministry for you. No, we have given our lives according to the Bible to equip you to prepare you so that together we all do the works of service, we all serve Christ together. So we're all be involved, and what does that look like? John tells us in first John chapter 3, look at these verses, first John 3. This is how we know what love is. Okay, Jesus said love your neighbor. John says this is how we know what it looks like. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. What does that look like? Well, it goes on- if anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him how can the love of God be in him. So the conclusion, verse 18, is dear children let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. So how do we love our neighbor? Do we love our neighbor by just walking up to them, shaking hands, I really love you. Is that how we love our neighbor? No, not just with words. We love our neighbor through ministry, through reaching out to meet the needs of people- spiritual needs, physical needs, relational needs, emotional needs, whatever the needs are, and remember Jesus told us who our neighbor was, right? He told a story, the story of the good Samaritan, when someone asked him who's my neighbor? Jesus tells a story basically to make the point- anybody you see who has a need, that's your neighbor. So to love our neighbors, to reach out in ministry to everybody we possibly can and serve others, that's ministry. Clear purpose for the church. Third clear purpose for the church, Matthew 28, is evangelism. Evangelism. Jesus said in verse 19, therefore go and make disciples of all nations. Go! Go for me, go in my name, go represent me. I'm leaving. That's His message to the disciples here. I'm leaving, I'm going back to heaven. You go and make disciples of all nations. The Greek word for disciple, matathace, is the word which means to be a learner and a follower. That's what it means. So people are to learn about Christ, to learn who he is. We are to take the gospel message to people so that they learn who Jesus is and what he's done for them so that they can make a wholehearted commitment to become a follower of Christ. That's evangelism. That's taking the gospel wherever we go day by day and into all the world so that people can learn about Christ and follow Him. That's a disciple. that's a matathua disciple a matathace disciple. So we are to take the gospel to people. That is so significant. This commission is given five times in the gospels, all four gospels and in the book of Acts again. Jesus is saying this is important. It's important you get this. Taking the gospel to the world is more important than finding a cure for cancer. It's more important than correcting all the social and moral ills of our nation. It's more important than a warning that would save millions of lives. Not to have anything wrong with any of those things. They're great. They're wonderful. We should do all we can for those kinds of things, but isn't it amazing how people become so passionate about those kinds of things and not care one bit about their neighbor and whether or not he or she knows Christ. This is basic, this is critical, that we go, we go, we get out of our comfort zones, out of our homes and churches and go, and go take the gospel to people. Clear purpose. Fourth clear purpose, next part of verse 19, is the purpose of fellowship. Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Now, how does baptism get in here as being so important, one of the five basic things? How does it get in here? Well, because baptism in the New Testament time was much more than just a ceremony that publicly declared your faith in Christ. It is that, and that's important, but baptism was also the means by which people were welcomed into the church. You find this expression often in the book of Acts- they gladly received the Word or they accepted the message and they were baptized and they were added to the church and then the numbers are given. You see those three things went together in the New Testament- salvation, hearing and receiving the Word, then baptism, which unites you, publicly introduces you, welcomes you into the fellowship. There are parts of the world that understand this better than we do, you know. Dr. Wheeler was talking with us, Miriam was talking with us before she went back to Ukraine about baptismal services in Ukraine, when we were sitting around the table at lunch, and she was talking about the fact that in in Ukraine baptism is so much more than what we typically see it here. They make a big deal of it. It's like a party. They welcome people into the church, they give gifts, they give flowers to the people being baptized, they have a dinner. I mean, they welcome them into the church. I remember being in Budapest, Hungary, several years ago and I went to a service at night and they had a baptismal service and it was like that and people were really being welcomed into the church. You're part of us now, you belong here. They were saying baptism is a way in which fellowship, belonging to a body of believers, is introduced. In the New Testament times it was the ceremony which welcomed you into the body of believers. You see, it's not only important that we believe; it's important that we belong. One of the clear purposes for the church is that we work hard at getting folks to belong, to fellowship, to share, to care in the body of Christ. Clear purpose. Then the fifth clear purpose we'll call discipleship- verse 20. And teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. The word teaching is the word which literally means instructing from the Word of God so that people come to better know Christ, what He expects of us, and so that we grow to be more like Him. But it focuses on the teaching of the Word. Paul describes his discipleship ministry in this way in Colossians chapter 1. This is how to produce mature followers of Christ. Paul says that we proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom (that's the Word of God). So here's the result- so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. Perfect means mature, fully grown mature followers of Christ, fully committed followers of Christ, and Paul says we did that through the teaching of the Word. But people learn not only through hearing, though. They learn also through watching and having the truth modeled, and so Paul coupled that with teaching. These two commands, look at them in 1 Corinthians 4 and 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul says therefore I urge you to imitate me, follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. So discipleship focuses on the teaching of the Word of God, but in the context of relationship, where people are asked to follow me, do what I do. Let me show you how this is to be lived out now. Quite frankly, that's the area where we're a little weaker as a church. We have lots of great classes and Bible fellowships and opportunities to hear the Word of God taught. That's very important. Paul said that's how you mature people in Christ, but it has to be also done in the context of modeling and exampling, and that's done better in smaller groups of people where you can really relate to one another as fellow followers of Christ. So we'll be working on that that relational aspect of discipleship. But let me say this. These five purposes are the core of a New Testament church- worship, ministry, evangelism, fellowship, discipleship. That's the core of a New Testament church and it's not just in Matthew. We don't have the time this morning, but if we had the time, we could go to several other passages, and I would just challenge you to do this on your own. I'll give them to you. Five other passages that describe, that are intended by the writers of the New Testament to describe, what the New Testament church looks. Like Acts 2 verses 42 to 47, Romans 12 verses 1 through 8, 1 Corinthians 12 verses 1 through 31, Ephesians 4 verses 7 through 16, Hebrews 10 verses 19 through 25. Those five passages give summary statements as to what the church is to be and do, and in those passages, you will find all five purposes of the church in every passage. So these five purposes are not just something that Jesus said back in Matthew. They become the fabric, the core of the New Testament church all the way through the New Testament. What Paul highlights, the writer of Hebrews highlights, that this is what the church should be. Well, if there are two clear passages that lead us to five clear purposes, let me summarize with one clear strategy. We'll do this quickly. This just kind of helps introduce the next five messages. One clear strategy. The strategy stated. I'm going to suggest a new purpose statement for Johnston Chapel. It's this- we exist as a church to glorify God by growing fully committed followers of Christ. It's a little shorter than the purpose statement that we've used for years, a little better, a little easier to get a handle on. But we are to glorify God. That expression throughout scripture means that we are to represent Him on this earth and that people are to be able to look at us and see what God's like, that we're to show the world what God is like. We glorify him by growing, key word. This is a process, a lifelong process. All of us are in this process of little by little, stage by stage Paul says, Second Corinthians 3:18. From glory to glory we reflect more the glory of Christ. It's a process, so we're working on that process of growing. But what's the result we want? We want fully committed followers of Christ. Now, what do new fully committed followers of Christ look like? Well, let me say something about the strategy summarized. Here's what it looks like if this is our strategy, then. To summarize it, it looks like this or it sounds like this. Worship means to love Christ, fellowship means to come together as a body of believers to belong with Christ, discipleship means to grow in Christ, evangelism means to go for Christ, and ministry means to serve Christ. I want us to become familiar with those words because sometimes I know words like discipleship and fellowship, they don't carry a lot of meaning for us. So if we can put them in words that we use maybe we can grasp better what the church is to be and what a fully committed follower of Christ is to look like. We'll be talking about those as we go through this series in the next five weeks, and we'll talk about some how-to's. How do we love Christ? How is it that we can grow in Christ? What are the things you can do as a believer to become more mature? But before we stop, I want the strategy to be seen. I want you to have something you can focus on in your mind and see so that you can grasp what we're talking about. Here we're going to put a diagram on the screen. Just step by step, very quickly. This is what I trust that Johnston Chapel will look like. It begins with worship, a heart of worship. Now we're going to have several circles come up here in just a few moments, and if you've been here a few years you may remember that years ago we had a series of circles and the arrows were pointing in from the outside and it was our goal to try to bring people to church services and then get them to know Christ and become a part of the fellowship and move into the core which was the core of believers who were serving. I've come to see that that's backwards. The heartbeat of the church is worship. If you don't really develop a love for God nothing else that we're talking about will happen. It's got to start in our heart, and it's got to start with a heart for God that says I will surrender everything to Him, everything, and that's the heartbeat. Worship is the heartbeat of the church, and when we start there with loving Him in our corporate gatherings and in our private life, that heartbeat then moves out and we begin to interact with others in the church. That second circle should be coming up. Here we go, there it is- fellowship. So we move from worship to fellowship, where not only are we loving God, we're interacting with others, belonging with others, sharing our lives with others, caring about others in the ministry of the church. So we move from this worship where we love God to then love others, love others in fellowship, and from that fellowship then we move out to discipleship and we begin to grow deeper as we learn the Word of God better and we relate in context and help us see how the Christian life is to be lived. Then once we are doing that, as we are doing that, we move out from discipleship to evangelism. You see, we're not pulling inward, we're moving outward. We need to be an outreaching church that will be willing to go beyond our four walls and beyond our homes and neighborhoods so that we reach out to people. Go, Jesus said. He didn't say to the unsaved, Come. He said go. You're my people. You go! You go take the gospel to people. And as we take the gospel to people, we also see needs around us and so we move to ministry and those two go together. As we are reaching out to people to meet their needs we share the love of Christ. Evangelism and ministry go together. As we become an out-reaching church from a heart that beats for God and loves each other and is growing deeper in Christ to help us to be thrust out in evangelism and ministry, as we do that, we're going to see a lot of people out here. Where are they? They're here somewhere! There are the stars! There they are! We're going to connect with people, and as we connect with people and reach their needs, meet their needs and also give them the love of Christ, as they come to know Christ, you know what happens? Then they move back in this way to worship, and it's a circle, you see? As we reach people with the gospel then we bring them into a love relationship with God where they too begin to get that same heartbeat of love for God and of surrender to Him. Then they connect with people, and then you get to disciple them, and you start reaching others and ministering to others and the whole process just keeps going around and around like a circle. That is what Johnston Chapel should look like. That's what we need to look like. Now this afternoon the New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings will play for the right to meet the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl because you know the Colts are going to smash the Jets, so that's a done deal. Those four football teams that are playing today never reach that level, they never reach that level, by just being a bunch of guys that run out on the field and say I'm just going to do my own thing, man. I'm going to pad my stats, I'm going to do what I can do and I don't care about my teammates. No, no! A team reaches the level those four teams have reached with clear strategy and purpose. When they take the field today, they will have been well drilled on how the offense is going to attack the other's defense, how the defense is going to try to stop the other team's offense. They will have a game plan. They will know exactly what they're going to do, and if stuff doesn't start working real well, they'll tweak that at half time and change it to make sure they are focused on a game plan. They know what they're going to do. Let me say to you this morning, the church is far more important than a football team. The church is far more important than any business or corporate enterprise in this world, and we dare not go into the game, we dare not take the field without some kind of game plan, without a strategy, without knowing what Christ left us here to do how are we going to do. That what this is all about! Over the past year and a half, I've had the opportunity to preach in a lot of churches, almost every Sunday somewhere, and some of them were churches that had 20 people on Sunday morning. One of them was a church that had 2,000 people on Sunday morning, and there were churches everywhere in between. I saw a lot of good things and I saw a lot of things that broke my heart. I saw churches that had passion and direction and focus and purpose of all sizes and I saw churches that just were kind of wondering aimlessly, had no clue. Just show up on Sunday morning, let's grab a hymn book, pick out a song and sing a few songs. We'll give a little bit, we'll listen a little bit, and then we'll go home. No purpose, no passion, no direction. I think it breaks the heart of God when that happens. I don't want Johnston Chapel to be that way. I don't want to be that way, so let's refocus on what God has for us to do. Would you bow with me in prayer? Father, thank you for your Word, which so clearly gives us what you want the church to be and do. Father, I pray that You will help us to embrace with all of our hearts what it means to be a committed, fully committed, follower of Christ, and may we pursue that the rest of our lives with all of our passion. May we be and do as a church and as individuals what You would have us to be and do. In Jesus name we pray. Amen