2007 State of the Church Address (Excerpt Part 2)

This is the second excerpt from the 2007 State of the Church Address given at Life in Christ Fellowship. I hope that you may receive some inspiration as you read through it. What a great joy and honor to be used by God in the building of His Kingdom.



Projection
It is so easy to say, let’s just add another program or what we so often title “ministry”. By adding, we draw to the conclusion that this will take care of the issue of “faithfulness and fruitfulness.” A slippery slope that so many churches travel down is the belief that the next program/ministry is the sliver bullet. It will be the cure all. It will be the one that brings in the harvest. We need to realize programs come and go. There is always a new one waiting in the wings. I am not arguing against the development of programs or areas of ministry, but unless they are and continue to be “bringing people into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, one that is growing, productive and fruitful”, we have miserably failed them. We need to ask ourselves, “Are people coming into vital and vibrant relationship with Christ through the things we do as a church?” If our answer is no to this question, the program must be either re-aligned or discontinued. Time is too short and people are too precious for us to be wasting time, energy, and resources. No matter how hard you kick a dead horse, it will not get up. Take the saddle off and put it on another. I do believe in ministry and programs only if they are meeting people’s true need, and that being, people are needing to be truly connected and a part of the Kingdom of God. We must be a Kingdom-building focused church. We must focus more on the being side of life versus the doing side. We can be doing all day long, but unless there is development of the being side, we are just shoveling dirt with a tablespoon. The doing must produce the being. Most of us, if not all, realize that this is the cycle we must have, the doing producing the faithful and fruitful being, then the being resulting in faithful and fruitful doing. But it has to start at the being.

Safe Pasture
All around us in our ministry community are people … families and individuals, who are looking for the true church. Though they may not realize that this is what they are searching for, but yet in turn they are searching. We as a church have a responsibility to assist these in finding safe pasture. In presenting this, I have in the past been accused of being too much of a dreamer and not being realistic. But this is my dream. “The presentation of the pure gospel of Jesus Christ in its fullness of all that it truly is, to all people. To not predetermine the whom it is presented to.” One part of our calling is to the presentation. We must present the idyllic reality of “safe pasture”.

You ask,” What is safe pasture?” It’s a secure place where you feel deep connections with others, where you are known and encouraged and challenged. It’s an expansive place where you find profound meaning for your life and where you are helped in practical ways to live out that meaning. It’s a holy place where a holy God loves to make himself known, where he instructs his people, and where they come together to worship him for all that he is. It’s a place of love. A place of vitality, a place of change, a place of laughter and tears, and silence and loud praise. It’s a place that feels like home … because it is.

Safe pasture is a place of trust, a place where I can entrust my spiritual life to others in the confidence that they will lead me into an ever-deepening knowledge of God. I trust that they will not violate their call in the process, will not use my vulnerability for their own gain, and will not manipulate me to any end that leads me away from life with my Savior. Safe pasture is a place of protection. When I can trust my shepherds and can feel protected in my walk, then I am willing to follow them into the deeper and/or more difficult truths of Scripture. The earned trust that makes one “feel safe” validates the shepherd’s integrity.

Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, described safe pasture in these familiar words: “I am the gate, whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, I have come that they may have life and have it to the full (John 10:9-10).”

Because Jesus is the good Shepherd, he provides his people with safe pasture – a place of safety, a place of freedom, a place of refreshment and abundance and life. It is not a place of loss or death or personal desolation. Still, this “safe pasture” should not be understood as a home always and forever free from attack from wolves or exempt from disease. Rather it is the place where true defense can be found. Jesus never leaves us with only ourselves or with our personal resources at our disposal. He remains always with us, defending us and enabling us to overcome the world, the flesh and the devil. This is the kind of “safe pasture” Jesus means the church to provide.”
(“The Church You’ve Always Wanted”, E. Glenn Wagner)

As we reach out into our ministry community, we must remember to offer and provide this safe pasture. But for us to be able, we must find it our selves. We must enter and receive the unfathomable riches and blessings of the safe pasture that Christ is presenting to us. We, the church, are the continuation of the ministry of Christ. We are his body in this time and place.