As I said in part one of this series, in my first church as a full-time minister, the things we asked people to engage on a weekly basis changed over time by the people themselves. At some point, if something didn’t have enough value, people voted with their feet by finding something else to do! We stopped Sunday evening services and classes because, on any given weekend, we’d have 300 – 400 people in Sunday Morning service, and 50 – 75 people on Sunday night. The same was true for Wednesday night Bible Study. Over time, the church shifted and adjusted its activities, while staying true to its message, to best maximize the use of the facility and people’s time.
At C3AK, we have a Sunday morning service which is a modern expression of the church we see in the New Testament. In the descriptions of the early church, we find that people gathered in homes or larger spaces, sang together and shared in the Word of God. We have no other indication of the activities of the early church to draw from. This has been one of the things driving the manner in which we seek to have people engage with Christ Community Church. We deeply desire to see another characteristic of the early church come to life in us today, which is that the church was the place for fellowship, worship, communion, and the reading and teaching of God’s word. But the life we live in Christ meant to go out of the church and into our world. Let me pose a question which gets at the heart of this matter:
What if each one of us saw ourselves not as members of C3AK, but missionaries of C3AK?
If we did that, what would the purpose and importance of Sunday morning church be?
Let me suggest a few things:
If we grabbed hold of the idea that we are missionaries in our section of the world, we would be compelled to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with our community and/or to bring them to a place where the Good News could be presented to them in a meaningful way.
Sunday morning service would be a priority time where we greet one another and those who are seeking Jesus, worship God together, and receive Biblical teaching straight from God’s word with a clear call to follow Jesus. Every time.
One final question before part three shows up next week:
If you and I embraced our role as missionaries and we knew that every weekend, our friends and neighbors, the friends and neighbors of our fellow missionaries, and other people from our community would join us to hear about Jesus and experience authentic worship and community, how important do you think that 60 – 90 minute block of time could be?
In part three, I’ll begin to discuss how we get from where we are (members) to where we need to be (missionaries)
Pastor Tracy