Video Transcript: Lesson 28 Mission

Hello, welcome back to Christian leaders Institute, John Kenny. And we're  continuing to dive into this incredibly challenging and rewarding and wonderful  area of ministry called revitalization where we see God bringing things that are  dead back to life. It's so exciting that we're doing this together. As I've often said  to you, I'm cheering for you, I'm praying for you that that you're going to see just  wonderful success, you can see the hand of God moving in your ministry, as you take on this great challenge of revitalization. Now, one thing I did want to  mention about this, now we're up to lecture 28, as you can see, and in each  lecture, we're covering 30, plus minutes of content. So when you do that, for 36,  lectures, we're pushing 20 hours of content. And in all that I'm giving, you know,  three, or four or five things to do or to think about. And the reality is, if you if I  give you a list of 150 things to do, it's not, there's no way, you're gonna, you're  gonna have a chance to do that. So what my hope is, as we're going through  these is that these series of three lectures that we do a piece for each session is really going to kind of give a different way to think about revitalization or some  different vocabulary, or just a different way of coming at it and understanding it.  And that as you're going through this, you're going to hit on some lectures, and  you say, this makes a lot of sense, this is really a good way for me to go about it. And so that's my hope, I certainly don't think that you're going to be able to do  everything I talked about in 36 lectures. So today, we're going to be talking  about building a model for ministry. And, and in some ways we've talked about  this. We've talked about it in different ways, we've come at it from different  angles. And so this is just another way for us to think about it. So hopefully,  these couple of lectures are going to be helpful for you, either to solidify what  you already have going on and how you understand it. Or that it will kind of be a  new way that you're like, oh, you know, I hadn't thought of it this way. And it  makes a lot of sense. So that's really what we're out here. I'm just trying to give  you a whole, just a whole kind of arsenal of ways of thinking about things and  vocabulary and approaches to really the same issue of why does the church,  why does your church Why does your ministry Why is it stuck? What is it need  to do? How what what are the steps you need to take to get there? Okay, so  today. And the next two lectures, we're talking about a model for ministry. And in  this lecture, we're going to be talking about mission, which is really  understanding. What is the church? Why does the church exist? And what is its  purpose? Why? And I mean, church, like capital C, like all of God's people, the  kingdom of God, like why do we what are we called out for? What is God calling  us to do? And then we find whether it's our local church or the ministry, we lead,  as an expression of the bigger church. How does that all fit in? And what are we  supposed to do? What? What's our purpose in all this? So let's pray. Our Father, we thank you so much for the gift of your church and the mission that you have  laid out for us. Lord, I do pray that we might have wisdom today. Lord, because  we know that, truly, if we don't know why we exist, and what our purpose is, Lord

we'll never be strong and healthy and vital and world changing. And Lord, that's  our heart. So we pray that You would give us wisdom and insight as we continue in this process. Amen. Okay, so let me start off with a definition that I think is  going to be helpful for us. Okay, so let's break down the really what the church is and what it's called to do. So I have a definition here. And it says the Church is  the Body of Christ, and is called to continue the ministry of Christ, with the help  of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God. Now, there's a few things in here that I  think we kind of want to break apart. One is this, this first line where it says that  we are the body of Christ. We are the, you know, the hands and feet we are of  Jesus. We are the physical manifestation, the expression of Jesus in this world  and certainly, you know, Paul speaks quite a bit about this Jesus, you know,  references this idea that we we embody him in this world that Jesus is physically present him in this world, and he's president through us. So that's what the  church is. And the church, then has a calling as Jesus's representatives as his  embodiment here, in on the work in Earth and on Earth. And in the world, we're  called to do something. And what we're called to do is to continue the ministry  that he started when he, in his incarnation, when he was, you know, walking  through Israel 2000 years ago, that what he what he did there is we're supposed to continue in in that role. Now, we don't just do that on our own strength,  because that's impossible, because Jesus did that which is impossible. And his  ministry was certainly empowered by the presence of the Spirit, at work in his  life. And so in the same way of this calling that we have, as God's people to  continue the ministry, we have the same power at work in us that Jesus did, that  were empowered by the Holy Spirit, to do the things that only the Lord can do.  And then the bottom line maybe is the most important of all, is that what we do,  through the health of the Holy Spirit and continuing the ministry that Jesus  began, we do it for the honor and the glory of God, it's all for the Lord, it's all  about him. So it's never about building an institution or creating a name for  ourselves or, you know, having our name on a letterhead or out in front of a  church or anything like that. It's always about the honor and magnifying exalting  the name of the Lord, in our world. So I think this is a really kind of just a quick,  but full definition of what is the church? And we can see here, we've really  uncovered what is the mission of the church? Why does the church exist, it's to  continue the ministry of Christ, for the glory of God. That's really what our  mission is. So we're going to break that down, we're going to go into that just a  little bit deeper. But that's really the bulk of what we're saying is that the church,  the ministry, you're over. The purpose of it, ultimately, is to continue what Jesus  did, and to do it for the glory of God. Now, apart from this kind of an  understanding, and the fancy word we might use as ecclesiology, which is kind  of the theology of the church, the purpose of the church, apart from this kind of  ecclesiology, the church has no identity and no purpose. This is who we are. It's  what we are. It's what we're called to do. And it's how we do it. So just having a 

really clear sense of this is very important. Now, as a ministry leader, this is  probably old news to you, you know, this is like, yes, no kidding. But I think one  of the issues we face is that not everybody in our pews or in them, really  understand this, that they have a very different idea of what churches, they're  thinking, church is something here for me, and and I want the pastor to do this,  and, and I want all my needs met. And when we look at, we look at something  like this, we realize it's a very different understanding. So you might say the  word church and mission, and somebody else might say those words, and you  can mean two very, very different things. But I think if we push into scripture,  we're going to find this. And this is pretty darn close to what? What is really true.  So in order to be a strong and healthy church, we need to have a really clear  understanding of the church, what its mission is, and a commitment to do it.  Right. I mean, it makes sense. If we don't understand it, we don't have a  commitment to what the church is supposed to be. The church is never going to  be that, okay. It's never going to be what it's supposed to be on accident. It has  to be a very intentional pursuit of doing what God has called us to do. So let's  talk about mission. Okay. How do you talk about mission? How do you lead your people through a conversation about mission? Well, when we talk about the  mission of the church, the first thing we have to realize is that it really ultimately  is going to be a process of discovery of what God has revealed to us already.  This is not a creative endeavor. It's not like you're opening up your own  business, and you can be creative to what you want your mission to be, and you get to figure it out. We're not the owners of the church. We are not the authors  or the inventors of the church, so we don't have any say in determining what its  mission is to be. God has revealed it to us. He's already shown us. And  remember, we just said in the in the previous slide, that the church is called to  continue the ministry, the Ministry and the mission of Christ like it's, so it's  already there. We just have to like, uncover it, rediscover it, reveal it, you know,  embrace it, all those kinds of things. Okay, so what is it? What what, what can  we discover? Well, first, again, if we're, if we're going to continue the ministry of  Jesus, then we have to begin with a question. Well, what did Jesus do? What  was his model? What was his example? Well, we see all kinds of things. He was teaching the gospel. He was healing, he was feeding he was serving always. He was discipling. You know, at different levels, whether it was large crowds and  preaching, or very intentional one on one discipleship or small group  discipleship. With the apostles. He was building community, through them, he  was teaching them how to love each other how to how to live together, how to  be humble, and all those sorts of things. He was, like I said, he was serving. You know, all the miracles, Jesus did, He never does any for himself. It's always for  others. He's bringing sight he's bringing, hearing, he brings food, he brings, you  know, makes the crippled, walk all those kinds of things. So Jesus is, he's this  combination he's teaching, he's preaching in his actions, he's reversing the 

effects of the curse of the fall, you know, through his miraculous ministry, all this  kind of stuff. And he's doing it in a way, very humbly, very graciously. But he  upholds the truth. And so we kind of get this idea as we go through the Gospels, really, that our lives personally, and our lives collectively, as a church, it's  supposed to kind of look like that. I mean, that's, that's, that's really what our  mission is this a, try to keep doing what Jesus did. Now, we also have some  more explicit and indirect commands. So obviously, we see Jesus example in  the Gospels. And this is something that I'm personally doing with several key  leaders in my church, we're doing a very, very thorough in depth study of the  Gospels to say, What did Jesus do? How did he do it? Why did he do it? How  can we do what he did? How can we become more like Him? So this is very  important, and understanding the mission of what the church is, is really  understanding what Jesus was all about. Okay, then, we have a direct  commission from Jesus. I'm sure many of you, if not all of you, you are familiar  with the words that Jesus gives in Matthew 28, the great commission to go out  into all the world and make disciples, to baptize them to teach them to obey all  the things that Jesus had taught the disciples and the commission that he gave  to his original disciples. It's the same commission he gives to us. And so we  have some very direct words from Jesus. In Matthew 28, we also have some  direct words from Jesus in Acts 1, where again, he tells his disciples just prior to  his ascension, that they're to wait in Jerusalem and that, then they will be filled  with power, and that when they filled with power, they'll go out into Jerusalem,  Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the world. They'll go everywhere as his  witnesses, so we're to be a witness. I mean, that's what the purpose of the  churches is to be a witness to testify that what we have seen what we know is  truth and to declare it to the world. So we talk about mission. We've got all of  Jesus's examples of his life. We've got this commission from him. And then  fortunately, we also have a description of the early church in its in its kind of  most pure, uncorrupted form. What was what was it really meant to be? And so  we've got some great descriptions in Acts 2, also in Acts 4 as a really wonderful  description of the early church, and so we can see in Acts 2, it says they  devoted themselves, the early church to the apostles teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. All the believers were together. They  were selling possessions and goods they had, they were giving to anyone if they had needs, all those kinds of things. So this is beautiful, wonderful picture of  what the church was like in its earliest days. And it's, again in its purest form. We also have a wonderful description from Paul in Ephesians 4 that talks about  what is the church supposed to do. And it talks about how Jesus gave different  jobs, different gifts, and abilities to different people, in order to accomplish the  mission of the church. So it says, It was He who gave some to be apostles,  some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors, and teachers. So we can just see there, what is some of the purpose of the church is to have 

an apostolic ministry, to be prophetic, to be evangelistic, to pastor others, to  teach others, I mean, just right there we see this is this is what he Jesus  equipped people, and he called them and to do a task. So that tells us that's  what the task of the churches, right. And it says all the but altogether, they do  this, verse 12, to prepare God's people for works of service. So one of the tests  of the church is to prepare people within the church for works of service. So that  the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the  knowledge of the Son of God and become mature that a big part of the mission  of the church is to help believers mature in their faith, it's attaining to the whole  measure of the fullness of Christ. I mean, I'm just blowing through these verses  really quickly. But hopefully you can see that when we talk about the mission of  the church, this isn't something we have to be creative about, and try to invent,  that the Lord, in His Word, and in his life, and in His ministry has very clearly  revealed the sorts of things that the church should be about its purpose, and its  identity. So if you can, you know, do a good study of all these things. And you  can kind of kind of group them together and organize them, what would you  come up with? Well, that's something that our church had done with our leaders, and we did a lot of study. And here's what we came up with, here's kind of our  summary of this is what a church should be. And we basically figured out five  areas that when you look at the whole witness of Scripture, you can kind of take  any passage or section of Scripture, and you can kind of put it in one of five  areas kind of one to five buckets, pretty much everything fits into, okay, and so  the first is worship. That is, obviously the call of the church is to worship Jesus  Christ is to worship the Father through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  And that if the church isn't worshiping, it's obviously that's not part of what is its  purpose and identity is also gospel sharing. We have that in the Great  Commission we have that about being witnesses, we have this in Ephesians 4  about some to be evangelists. So this, the purpose identity of the church is  always going to be about sharing the good news of Jesus Christ to a world that  he loves very much that rejects them. And that we have this good news of  salvation. So that's always going to be kind of a piece of what the church has to  be about. We also have discipleship is about is maturing to a unity of faith and,  and the fullness of God or Christ within us. Were told in Peter tells us about  growing in grace and a knowledge, the Acts, too, it talked about, they, you know, they, they, they were committed to the apostles teaching. So just as like this,  growing up this maturing in faith, that's a big part of what the church is to be  about. It's not just to get people to be converted, so they go to heaven. It's about converting people, so that they may grow in Christ and become more like him  and bring him honor and glory and do Kingdom work and ministry. You know,  until the point the Lord calls them home. Okay, so we just don't want people to  raise their hands and say, Yes, you know, I believe and then not doing anything  with it. Obviously, service is a big thing in Acts or in Ephesians 4 it says, to 

prepare God's people for works of service. Jesus himself says I did not come to  be served, but to serve. So if Jesus explicitly He declared that as like the  purpose of His coming was to serve and to be a servant. Well, then we have to  be that as well, if we're going to continue his ministry has to be a ministry of  service, and then also a loving community. Jesus came, not just in isolation, but  he, he built a community of faith, he was calling people out. And, you know,  creating relationships and building and love. And, you know, the idea that we are the body of Christ, we're united, more than just a set of beliefs, but in the  deepest way, in that this is what we're supposed to be. And Jesus says, you  know, they'll know your mind disciples, by the way you love each other. And, you know, we have to love one another. John, in his letters at the end of the New  Testament, especially I John, He talks so much about love as, as really the work of the church, and the the outward expression of the presence of the Spirit in us. And what it means to follow Jesus is, is ultimately rooted in our love for each  other. And it's expressed in that way. So anyway, here's kind of like the five  buckets, we can kind of put things in. And what we discovered, after we had  done significant time of study in scripture was, I guess the good news was this,  we realized, as we started to look at what other people and churches had done,  that pretty much everybody comes up with the same five things. They're slightly,  they're worded a little bit differently, or there might be slight shades of difference. But this is basically what the church is. And if these five seem somewhat familiar to you, I mean, that's, it's probably that's the case of these are not. Again, it's my church when we study scripture, we shouldn't come up with a list any different  than yours, or any different from anybody else. In fact, when we were doing this, I was I had been reminded when we got to the very end of this, how a number of years ago, we're reading Rick Warren's purpose driven church. And Rick Warren has five purposes of the church after he had done years of study. And guess  what, he's got the same five, we came up with which 1000s of other churches  who've taken on the task of discovering trying to discover the mission of the  church. Everybody comes up with the basically the same answer, which is good. Now, we just hit the pause button here, because you might be thinking back to a few lectures ago, where we were talking about indicators of Church Health, and  these are the things the signs that you know, like prayer and ministry, the word  and loving, covenantal community and serving, and you might be the sounds an  awful lot like that, and for good reason. So there's definitely tons of overlap here, right. So if you're looking for the healthy indicators of a church, you're going to  see lots of like, the purpose in that as well, right. And if you're talking about the,  the the mission and the purpose of the church, you should see plenty of healthy  indicators. So if you're doing this, if you're fulfilling the mission by by, by doing all these things, again, you're there in some ways, it's like it's one in the same like  mission and health and purpose. And it kind of just like I said, at the beginning of this, like, we're kind of covering ground, but like in a different way, we're 

presenting in a different way, coming at it from a different angle, organizing it  slightly differently, but there is so much overlap here. Because when we talk  about mission, if you're on mission, you're going to be a healthy church, if you're a healthy church, you're going to be on mission. They're really two sides of the  coin, you can't really split them up. So again, our process of discerning this was  just a lot of study of Scripture. We read books on what is the purpose of the  church, those kinds of things, there isn't a book necessarily called that although  Warren's purpose driven church is pretty darn close. But we looked at what  other people have discovered. I've mentioned this name before, Aubrey  Malphurs, M-A-L-P-H-U-R-S. And he has some books like advanced strategic  planning and things like that, where he really spells this out and really any book  that talks about the mission vision of the church, and so there's going to be  something that's going to end up with something very, very similar to this. With  that being said, I would still challenge you to go through this process on your  own. Because it would have been really easy for me to just take these five and  gone to our team and said, Okay, this is what we're supposed to be about. And  that probably would have had some effect, but not nearly as much as when we  studied it. And then like, they learned it for themselves, and they embraced it.  And they saw it in Scripture. And it really wasn't hard for them to argue with  anything else. And so really studying scripture, looking what others do, but doing it as a shared process, again, not just saying, well, here's, here's your list of five  things next, really study in the way that they can embrace it, understand it, own  it, feel as if they have discovered it, because if they feel like they've discovered  it, then it's going to, it's going to be something that they'll hold on to, and they'll  remember, rather than just passing on information, okay. So a big piece of this  really is, again, just the discovery of what the church is supposed to be. The  second piece is then to articulate it. Okay, so this is kind of putting it in words,  putting it in some kind of a paragraph form. And some people say it should be in, you know, really memorable, or it should rhyme or, you know, start with each of  them should start with the same letter or item. I don't know, you know, or should  be at least a paragraph. And I don't know about any of that kind of stuff. I think  just if you can write something in a way that is very specific and clear, that really  crystallizes among your leadership. What is the purpose and mission of the  church? That's good enough, you know, you want to write it in a way and have it  worded in a way where there's not any confusion, that you are crystal clear of  what you're about. So when we did this, there were multiple drafts, and we had  edits and conversations. And it would be interesting, because we'd spend like a  half hour talking about a phrase of like, how specifically were we going to  express this and we would have a word, and we would talk for a half hour about  a word or a phrase. And it might have seemed like, we were kind of just getting  way too much in the details. But it was a really rich conversation, because they  were they were really clarifying in their own minds, what, what exactly is it that 

the church is supposed to be doing? So we took a lot of time for edits and  discussion. I was one of the writers, but we had several people offering edits,  and collaborating until there was something that we just really liked, we really  agreed on, and felt really good about in so and then became the next step once  our leadership team had discovered it, and we articulated it. So it was just,  again, crystal clear, a very pure, crisp statement that said exactly what we  thought the Scripture said, then we had, what I would say, was the real  challenge of getting this into the consciousness of the congregation, so that the  whole church would also understand what our mission and what our purpose  was. So getting the congregation to adopt it. So because we wanted this to be  more than just putting something on a piece of paper, but really sinking into, like, the kind of thing that would form and change and shape the culture of our  church of like, this is what it means to be a church. This is who we are. So how  did we do that? And honestly, that's, that's an ongoing, continual process, you're always going to be fighting against this because gravity of kind of human nature  and sin is always going to pull it back to the mission of the church is to meet the  needs of me and my family. It's and so you always kind of be fighting against  that and saying, No, it's It's not that it's something else. It's, it's about continuing  what Christ had started. So how we've done that, there was a couple of  superficial ways I think we've done it. And I mean, superficial like, they didn't  help but it was more like surface kind of thing. So like on the front of our bulletin, our worship bulletin every week. It's printed on that. Often at meetings, we  different ministry team meetings will recite it together it will be like at the top of  the agenda and we'll recite it. And I don't really care if the church has it  memorized. And different people say different things about that. I don't  necessarily care. If they have it memorized word for word. What I do care more  about is that they at least understand it to some degree. And even on the most  basic level, that we exist for a purpose beyond them, that we exist for a purpose  that was given to us by God. And even if they can't remember all five things, that there's a sense of like, okay, this, this is God's thing, and he's trying to do  something, with it. And through it. Some of the I would say the more deeper  significant things we've done, rather than just recite it or have it on the bulletin is, we restructured our whole organizational kind of chart our whole the way we, the way we're all divided up, and how we do ministry and our leaders, we organized  our whole church, we kind of just started over from scratch. And we organized  around the five parts of the mission of worship, gospel sharing, discipleship,  serving, and loving community. And that's how our whole church is organized.  And then we have leaders on that, and I'm going to talk in a couple of lectures  on structure. And so I don't want to get into it too much now. But we had, we just like, we're, if we're going to want to do these things, then we're going to  structure ourselves around these very purposes, right. And leaders over each  one, who have a very clear sense of of what each component of the mission is, 

and how, how they're responsible for what does it look like in our church when  we do it. So we really just kind of read started from scratch, and then just built  around that. And so obviously, this gives us a lot of direction, it helps us stay on  mission, right? Because our whole church is organized around this idea of  mission. So we also will end meetings, after we go through a whole meeting,  whatever team it is, or committee or whoever, whoever it is, it will say, did our  conversation today? Did it have to do with the mission of the church? And in the  decisions we made? Did it help further our mission? Or was it true to the mission of the church? Was it true to what Christ has begun? And, you know, hopefully,  our answer is yes, it totally is. And to be honest, sometimes it's like, no, we kind  of got off the rails, and we were talking about something else. And I don't know  how much it really has to do. And honestly, that's just a good wake up call for us  to be like, not everything we talked about, is actually going to be helpful and  contributing. And so we've learned to try to stick more on on on topic. We redid  our budget, into basically the five areas that we've talked about worship, gospel  sharing, discipling, serving and loving relationships. So we say, well, okay, what  are the things we need to do to spend our money on this. And so basically, our  budget is, those five areas and then like an administrative area as well. So we  just have six areas. And if, if there's a thing that we want to spend money on,  and it doesn't fall into one of those six areas, well, then we were not spending  money on it. We've had some ministries in the past, that we realized it didn't fit  into any of those five areas. And we just, we got rid of them because it's like this  doesn't fit in anywhere. So these are some of the more significant things we've  done kind of like behind the scenes structuring that have really kind of more  driven this thing. With a lot more purpose and intentionality than just saying,  well, we've showed it on the screen a couple of times. So anyway, that's  mission. And I'm excited for you to begin this process of just pushing in and  discovering this for yourself and with your leaders. And anytime I can encourage you to be in the word and learning, hearing the words of Christ or the teachings  of Paul, I'm just so excited and God's gonna bless it and do something with it.  So let me pray for you. And before we move on to our next lecture, Lord, thank  you for this gift of the church, we do praise you. And we praise you, Lord, for  what you did when you came as a baby and grown into a man and offered up  your life for the sins of the world, Lord, help us to know you better help us to  become more like you help our churches to be more faithful expressions of the  body of Christ. So, Lord, that you might be honored and glorified. In all your  majesty. We love you so much. And Lord please, do a great work in and through my dear friends listening to this lecture and in their ministry, we pray this in Your  name. Amen. All right, that's it for mission until next time. God bless