Episode 176: What is the Mission of the Church? | Tim Henderson+

Thank you Brian, thank you Quig. Come on friend. No brother it's my turn back up off me.

Alright, what is this? I don't need any of these good things. Quig is very generous with his pulpit, in fact.

Interactive Mission Statement Activity

Alright you guys, we're gonna play a game. Get out your phone—we're gonna do something we haven't done for years now. We haven't done it since before COVID. Grab your cellphone and do one of two things.

Either go to menti.com or if you're fancy like Andy Sullivan, just take a picture of that QR code—it'll take you there. Whichever is easier for you. Menti.com, I can tell it's almost like I can see your ages based on the fact that you're taking the QR codes or not.

So menti.com—if you go there you've also got to enter that number 23541565. But I think the QR code will just take you straight to it.

Now what this does is it kinda turns a monologue into a dialogue, right? And if you're willing to play along, you're gonna have the opportunity to answer questions in real time. We'll see your responses on screen and we'll be able to engage a little bit more richly through this tool.

So menti.com, you guys ready? Is it working? Some of you are getting a little advanced now. You're trying the QR code. Well done.

Alright, is it working? Who's online? Who's into it? You there? We got a bunch of people? It's working? Okay, great.

So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna ask you a question. It's gonna be on the screen. It's gonna be the mission statement of a company, the mission statement of an organization, and your job is to try to figure out who this is. And if you think you know, keep your mouth shut—just type it in with your thumbs. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We're gonna build a word cloud and see if you can get these right.

Amazon

Okay, menti.com 23541565. The first one—go to it, that's good. Who, what business has this as their mission statement? "To be earth's most customer centric company. To build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online."

I will be honest, this is not the hardest question in the deck, okay? This one should be pretty clear. Go ahead and unpack the results or hit H to see it and it'll get bigger, yeah.

That's Amazon as it gets, right? Customer centric, you can find and buy anything online—I mean anything online, okay?

Apple

How about this one? Who thinks as their mission statement: "It is to bring the best user experience to its customers through its innovative computer hardware, computer software and services."

Now by the way, while you're thinking who is that—who does that sound like to me? A good mission statement tells you this is what we do. When you get up in the morning, what do we do here again? This. It should distill down into the most essential, the essence of the thing. This is what we do. And if you know what you do, that really can help you to know what we also don't do.

Who is this one? Let's see. Apple is the right answer. Microsoft? Are you kidding me? Right, it's absolutely Apple. Thank you very much.

Pinterest

Okay, let's go to the next one. Let's see. This one's harder, okay. I don't think I would have known this if I hadn't looked them up.

Who thinks, who wakes up, what business, what organization, what group says: "Our purpose every day is to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love."

Type in your sense of that. My guess, Becky—I think you know this one. Do you know what this one is? This feels Becky-ish to me. Do you not know? You don't know? Oh, okay. We'll see. I think you'll know when you see it.

Alright, who is this? Let's see. Center answer. You get the crowd—the wisdom of the crowd. It's Pinterest. Can you see that? That's what Pinterest is. You know what Pinterest is, right? Becky knows what Pinterest is, I'm sure you do, right?

To give people the inspiration to create a life they love—that's what they do.

TED

Alright, let's go to the next one. This one is—I love this one if no other reason than it's efficient, right? Omit needless words. Who is it? Which organization, what business, their whole purpose is to spread ideas? Do you know?

There's a sound that I associate with this. Let's see if you guys know. It's in there but it's not Google. No? Oh I saw it. Now it's lost.

The answer is TED. You know what a TED Talk is? You guys ever watch TED Talks? Their whole thing—that's what they say—spread ideas. That's what all TED Talks are.

Nike

I think we have one more. Let's see. One more mission.

Okay, who says this? This is good. Whose mission is "innovation to every athlete in the world. P.S. If you have a body, you're an athlete."

Who does that sound like? Who likes to pretend basically that everyone's an athlete? This has been their marketing for years, right? Because if you only market to athletes, there's not that many of them.

But if I can persuade everybody they're an athlete, they might buy my shoes. Nike. That's what they do. Don't you love the Pelotons up there? Are they gonna exist as a company in thirty days? I don't know.

Here's the last one. We're gonna flip it. I've been giving you mission statements and asking you for the organization. Now we're gonna flip it. I'm gonna give you an organization and you tell me the mission. You ready?

What is the mission of the church? Not this church—I love this church—but the church. When Jesus came and walked on the earth, he organized his people. He left this gathering, this ecclesia, this group of people. He said, here's what I want you to go do. What is it?

You can type this in with your thumbs. You got a little bit more space. It's gonna display a little bit differently. We're gonna get a bunch of individual thought bubbles. What's the mission of the church? What are we here for? When we wake up in the morning, what are we supposed to do?

Let's see what you think. Make disciples. Spread the gospel. Love one another. Great commission. Make disciples. Go and make disciples. Make disciples. This is good news. Make him known. This is what we do. You guys did great.

Now, if the mission of the church is to make disciples—and it is—where do we go to learn about that? Where would you go in the scriptures to find the mission of the church? Any particular passages leap to mind for you?

Matthew 28. I love it. Matthew 28. If you wanna flip in your Bibles there to Matthew 28, verses 18 to 20 in particular. This is often where we'll go. There's a lot of places where the mission of the church is described, but Matthew 28:18-20 tends to be our favorite.

One thing I'll share—I'm gonna frame it for you here slightly differently than you're gonna see it in English. In English, your translation probably says something like this:

Therefore go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. — Matthew 28:19-20

That's fantastic. That's great. I would just quibble a little bit with the grammar of it. Really what it says in Greek, what Matthew wrote, what Jesus said is: therefore make disciples. That's the big idea. And then he gives three participles—going, baptizing, and teaching. But the main idea, the big idea, if you wanted to be like a TED talk and just dial it down to the most distilled, efficient essence, it is make disciples. And then with three little sub-points: going, baptizing, and teaching.

This is really what Jesus is saying. Now this idea that we're gonna unpack making disciples as we go. We're making disciples, whatever that is, hold that thought. But as we do it, we do it by going. We're gonna go somewhere, which is to say that the making of disciples is not merely some little local concern. This is global. It's too small a thing for Jesus to be the savior of just this little Palestinian province. It's for the whole world, and we are to go. Some are to go to far-flung lands. Some are to go across the street. But we're making disciples as we go.

Second thing is baptizing. Now this could in your mind just be a double click to a ceremony. You got this water tank. Baptizing is like, get them wet. Make disciples, but we don't like them dry. Could be that. But there's more to it than just the ceremony because the ceremony itself—and this is always the case—ceremonies are always an external sign of an internal reality. And the internal reality, the essence of what it is to be baptized, is that we identify with him. That we're united to him. That literally the word baptized means to dip. And the idea would be if I took a white shirt and I dipped it, I baptized it into purple dye, what would I pull up? It'd be a purple shirt. Right? The shirt is now identified, saturated with, one with, unified with the purple.

When you were baptized into Jesus, you became identified with him. Paul makes a big scene about this in Romans 6—that we are united to him.

That this ceremony shows us we're uniting to him in particular as we go under the water in his death. But we don't leave you there, right? We could, but we don't. We bring you back up out of the water and you're united to him in his life. That baptism is about a unification of our life with the father, the son, and the holy spirit. In particular, because of Jesus' death and resurrection. We're making disciples as we go. We're making disciples connecting people, unifying people to the fullness of God.

And then finally, teaching. Teaching is the thing—we make disciples of all nations—and we're teaching. That could sound like the stuff that I love, which is just information. I love to teach. I trade in knowledge, intellectual curiosities. It's not what he's talking about. Teaching them what? To obey. That's a different thing, right? It's not teaching them to be good at Bible trivia. It's teaching them to obey.

That as we make disciples we're creating people who are quick to bend the knee to the sovereignty and the power, the beauty, the majesty of Jesus. They're quick to say, "Ah, this is what I wanna do. What would Jesus want me to do? Okay, fine. I'll do that instead." Whatever our lives are doing, we're learning. I have to be taught. You can't just tell me to obey. Have you ever told somebody to obey? That doesn't work. We have to be taught to obey. This is incremental change in our lives as he becomes more and more king of all things.

So what's our mission? Right there. We baptize, we obey. We're doing that not only ourselves because we wanna be disciples, but we're helping others to do that because we wanna make disciples.

Understanding the Mission

Now, if you get this, if this lands and you understand this is our mission, we crushed it, right? You wrote it down. Then I think there's a whole slew of questions that we have to answer. Lots and lots of questions that this should produce in our minds.

Among them: What's a disciple? Like, what does it actually look like? Am I a disciple? Is there a difference between being a Christian and being a disciple? How does this all work out? What would a disciple do?

I think you can conclude things like: A disciple is one who's united to the father, son, and holy spirit. Yes, yes, yes. Amen. Of course. You can conclude a disciple is one who's been taught to obey. But what does it look like?

If we imagine this—imagine that we are a factory. We're a company. We produce something. We've got this process. We've got machinery. We get some kind of raw good that enters the factory over here, and then we do something to it. Right? There's this process, these gears, this thing, and then there's this conveyor belt, and rolling off the other end is what? What do we make here? Disciples. Okay, so it's a disciple-making factory.

Well, first thing we gotta know is: What's this gotta look like when it's all done? Like, what is a disciple? How do we know if we've made the widget, if it's doing what it's supposed to do? Right? And if we figure out what it looks like when it's rolling off the thing, that's great. You gotta begin with the end in mind. But then you still gotta come up with a process. What's happening behind the curtain? What are the gears? What are we doing? Right?

If I know my raw good—you know what my raw good is that I'm gonna turn into a disciple? It's an unbelieving sinner. This is what we do. Our raw material—like iron ore—is people who don't believe Jesus, who don't like him, but their lives are a mess because we're fallen and broke. We take unbelieving sinners and something happens, and then over here there's a disciple. This is the church. This is what we do. We turn unbelieving sinners through some process into disciples of Jesus.

We've gotta know what does that disciple look like. If we're gonna build a process that's focused on the proper end, we need to know what the end is. And I think "disciple" is too blunt. I think we need to get a little bit more granularity on what that looks like.

So give me—well, actually, let me pepper your mind with a couple other questions first. What's a disciple? Right? We gotta figure that out. We're also gonna have to figure out like, "Okay, well, great. Now I know I gotta get from raw unbelieving sinner to disciple. How on earth does that process accomplish? What does that look like?"

Then you might wanna wonder: "Okay, well, keep using the word 'we.' We do this, we do this, we do this. Who the heck is 'we'? If we're being honest, do we really think that 'we' is Quig? Is this Quig's job? Is the mission of the church really the mission of Quig? Or is the mission of the church the paid staff? Brian, you're now on the hook."

Barb, sorry, but we gotta do this. Or is it we? Is it big we? Is it you? What's the right answer you guys? We are the church. We make disciples. We all do. So what do we need to be about?

If we're gonna take this whole mission of the church and rewrite it in our brains to the mission of the paid staff of the church, the mission of the rector of the church—that's a very different question. The mission of the church is us. We are about this.

Oh, and by the way, while we're doing that, if we really wanna make ourselves miserable, we might need to ask: which of the things that we're presently doing that we love and enjoy, that we spend our time and our money and our energy on, are actually contributing to that stated mission? And which things are we just doing because it's what we do? Because we've always done it?

If we ran an audit you guys, would we find that we're using our people, money, systems, tools, our energy, our resources as well as we can given the specific end that Jesus has assigned to us to make disciples? Or are we doing some things that are entertaining, well-meaning, religious, popular, and the way we've always done things because they're comfortable, but maybe not particularly purposeful towards our Master's end?

That's an unpleasant question, I know. But I think it's a question we need to ask, and worse still, we need to answer. Are we doing a good job? Could we do a better job? These are the questions that we've been wrestling through as a staff team for months, and maybe you have as well. And so today and next week as well, we wanna share some observations with you about that.

What is a Disciple?

Today in particular, I really wanted to zero in on the question: what is a disciple? My guess would be that we all have maybe some answers about that in our head, but I'm not sure if we're all singing off the same sheet. We're gonna find out.

If you know what we're making, if you accept that the mission of the church is to make disciples, it might be useful to know what those are. What do they look like? What do they do? What are their capacities? What is their function? What's a disciple? You can give us a sentence. A disciple is one who... these are what a disciple looks like. These are the essential characteristics of a disciple.

These are great definitions. Here's how I would define it, and I'll give you this. This is simple. You can memorize this, and we can kinda anchor the rest of this talk, but maybe even the rest of our lives through this.

A mature disciple has three chief attributes that I wanna commit to you:

Number one, a mature disciple is one who walks by faith.

Number two, communicates their faith.

Number three, multiplies their faith.

A mature disciple is one who walks by faith in Jesus, communicates their faith in Jesus, and multiplies their faith in Jesus. This is what we're trying to do.

Walking by Faith

God loves faith. It's like his favorite thing in the world. He loves it. It delights him when we trust him. When we go beyond what we can see and we expect him to show up. To be honest with you, I don't know why this is like his favorite thing, but it is.

When Jesus meets somebody who expresses some extraordinary degree of trust, he's like, "Behold!" He's so excited when he comes across. He's like, "I've never seen anybody in all of Israel with this much faith." Do you remember that moment? It makes him happy.

In fact, not only does it make him happy, but Paul—or whoever wrote Hebrews—says this:

Without faith it is impossible to please God. — Hebrews 11:6

What? What would you have said if that sentence was "without blank it's impossible to please God"? Maybe holiness? Without righteousness? Without love? These wouldn't be bad answers, but that's not what it says. Without faith it's impossible to please God.

He loves it. He loves it. He loves it. When we trust him, he wants us to be like, "You know what? I don't know how this is gonna work out. I'm not even sure it's going to, but I'll jump into it. Because if it doesn't, that'll be your problem, and you like it when I trust you. Let's dance." He loves it when we trust him.

Hebrews goes on to say it's impossible without faith to please God because number one, you gotta believe that he exists, and number two, you gotta believe that he rewards those who diligently seek him. He's inviting us to step out of this place of comfort and into some risky place.

If I looked at my life and ran back through the history of my own life, there have been moments of profound faithlessness. I didn't trust, I didn't believe, my life is marked by fear and I don't wanna move because I don't know what's gonna happen. Show me the money up front. That's not faith. But there have also been moments that are far more fun, far more exhilarating, far better stories when I didn't know how the story was gonna turn out. But I just thought, Lord, if you're real, then you can work it out. And even if you don't, you can clean up the mess, so let's dance.

A House Story

I've got so many stories of this. For whatever reason God has been pleased to engage with Kelly and I largely through the homes that we live in. Every house that we have lived in has some weird supernatural story to it. I'm gonna jump in midstream for the sake of time.

We lived in a house when I was directing Campus Crusade for Christ at Westchester University. We took over the ministry and it was unhealthy, small, and just wasn't great. And through the mercy of God, it thrived. It grew and it was large and it was successful and it was a lot of work. There was this house that we wanted and God provided a home for us and it was outrageous. We were two blocks from campus on this gorgeous street. We were paying $600 a month for what was like a $500,000 house. It was a generous, gracious provision and I loved it.

About two months after we moved into this house, my boss asked me to move. He wanted us to leave West Chester and go to Penn State, and I just thought, are you kidding me? We just got this house. God has provided through this outrageous supernatural circumstance and you want me to leave it? We worked really hard to get this. We want to enjoy this. This is a stupid idea.

My wife said to me, "Tim, it would be a wicked thing not to follow God to Penn State if that's where he wants us to go."

Fine. But then I fell into this heresy trap. I was thinking, alright, if we go, you better give me another house when we get to State College. If I let this go, you owe me. This has to work out. That's bad, right?

But the alternative to that was also stupid. I cashed in the coupon early. You get like one of these in a life and I was impatient and I cashed in my coupon and so now all that's left is barren wilderness. Both of those were faulty.

So we went to State College and I felt like I was driving into prison. We went house hunting and we found this house that we loved and we put in a bid. This was back in the day when we didn't even have a cell phone. The house was on the edge of a cornfield. I may as well have owned a 100 acre farm but I had none of the work to do. I could just look at it. It was gorgeous.

We got home and on our answering machine there was a message that said they accepted your bid. We offered full price. The house was ours except we didn't have any money. I could not afford the payment that we just promised to make.

The next morning—I swear to you—the next morning, twelve hours later, a friend of mine came to the house. We were on staff with Campus Crusade then and we raised support. We had a group of families that supported us, giving maybe $50 a month, maybe $100 a month to support our ministry. A woman came by—I'd met with her a couple weeks ago, she was not on my mind—and she came by my house with a check for $7,500. She came on our support team for $625 a month, which was the exact difference between my $600 rental payment and our $1,200 house payment.

The need was met like that. She subsequently doubled her support. So she was supporting us like $15,000 a year. It was ridiculous, completely unheard of. And God didn't owe us anything. He did not owe me because I gave up that house.

But nor had I cashed in a one-time use coupon. He simply invited us to trust him, to step out, trust me, follow me to State College, and we'll see what happens. And all sorts of great things happen. And God loves it when we trust him. A disciple is one who walks by faith.

Not only that, a disciple is one who communicates their faith. Go to First Thessalonians. I love this passage. First chapter one, and I'll just read this to you. He says:

For we know brothers loved by God that he has chosen you. That should make you pay attention. How did we know that you really are his? How did we know that you're a disciple? Look at what he says. It's because our gospel came to you not just with words but with power, with the Holy Spirit, with deep conviction. For you know how we lived among you for your sake, and you became imitators of us and imitators of the Lord. In spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with joy, the joy given by the Holy Spirit. But look what else, you guys—verse seven. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord's message rang out from you. Not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has become known everywhere. — 1 Thessalonians 1

You guys, that's normal Christianity. Just standard, default, regular Christianity—as the gospel rings out. A mature disciple does not just walk by faith, but they also communicate their faith. It's what we do. And you guys have this golden opportunity right now. We're making this as easy as possible because Alpha is so clutch. Alpha is this program where all the hard work is done—it's brilliant. We just watched it in Sunday school, these fantastic videos, great content, great meals, all set up for great discoveries and great discussions together. And as we're doing that, all you need to do is invite your friends. Invite somebody, invite your neighbor, invite a coworker, invite a colleague. And as we do that, that is the expression of this—of communicating our faith. Amen, Brian? Alpha is this: mature disciples communicate their faith. One way that they do it is through Alpha.

Do this for me. Next screen. Who are the first names of the people you're praying for? Just thumb them in. Don't put their last names. Give them a little bit of anonymity. But is there somebody that you're thinking, "Oh Lord, make them come. I wanna invite them when I take a deep breath and I say the scary thing. I'm doing this thing at Alpha. Would you come?" Let them come. Who are the names? Let's see. We'll do this real quick. Chase and Daniel and Jill. Scroll down. Go, I think—yeah, get them down. Oh, good. Look, they'll just roll for us. Timothy, maybe that's Jim or maybe that's Timothy, and Chase and Dave and Krista and Tyler, Collie and Marcy and Becky and Sarah and Anne—who got a last name? Block that out—and Sam, right? Real people made in the image of God but maybe who don't yet know how great he is.

Disciples Walk, Communicate, and Multiply

Because disciples walk by faith, disciples communicate their faith, and disciples multiply their faith. This third step might be a little bit less obvious to you, but here's how this works. One of the essential characteristics of living things is they reproduce—reproducing offspring. We are not just to be disciples, we are to make disciples. And the disciples that we make are not just to be disciples, but they too are to make disciples. And so on and so on and so on.

Kind of the classic passage in this in the New Testament is Second Timothy 2:2. And there's a picture version of it. It says this:

The things that you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. — 2 Timothy 2:2

Generations there. Paul is saying to Timothy, I told you a bunch of stuff in front of other people. So there's Paul, and now there's Timothy and these others, and I want you to entrust that to reliable men—that's the third generation—who themselves will be qualified to teach others. And so on and so on and so on.

Because as we've said a bunch of times, the gospel came to you on the way to somebody else. It actually came to you. You are a legitimate terminus of the gospel message. It's for you. But it is not only for you. It is also for the people that you will reach, and for the people that they will reach, because you equipped them to be reachers. The very nature of discipleship is that it is multiplicative. We reproduce, reproducing offspring.

A mature disciple is one who walks by faith, who communicates their faith, and who multiplies their faith. And if we were a factory, the thing rolling off the end of the conveyor belt down here is one of those. We make disciples. We make walkers. We make communicators. We make multipliers.

So the question is, where do you find yourself in that process? Are you just beginning? Is it just starting, and it's great but it's scary? You're just beginning to walk by faith. If so, praise God.

What a fun, what a joy, what a delight and you're in for a ride. If you're already there, I'm like trusting and like, okay, well guess what? It's time to start moving your lips. It is time to open your mouth and it's time to talk to your friends because they may not have what you have, but we know that they desperately need it.

And if you're like, okay, I'm walking by faith, I'm communicating faith, the next thing to bring online is how do I begin to equip others so that they can also walk and communicate and multiply. This is what we, big picture, all of us, this is what we do.

And next week we're gonna continue the conversation when I have a little bit more time. And we're gonna try to answer the question, how does that happen? What is the process that turns unbelieving sinners into walking, communicating, multiplying disciples? And I hope that that will be of keen interest to you because it is our mission. It's your mission. And it's what we're already about. Groovy?

An Invitation to Prayer and Community

Alright, we're gonna take a minute and invite you. Some of you came in here this morning and you got plenty on your mind before you ever got here, right? Well let me suggest to you that what that means is that it might be that you gotta figure out how to walk by faith in this specific circumstance, this difficulty, this disappointment, this hurt. How do you walk by faith in an actual universe like this one?

If there is something that you're carrying, come down, we would love, it'd be our pleasure to walk by faith with you, to not leave you alone in that. These curved rails are for you to be alone with Jesus. The straight rails on the sides, someone can join you and listen in, whichever of those is better for you.

But where are you struggling to walk by faith? Or where are you just so excited that he showed up and you wanna come down and give thanks? Make an offering of love to him. That's as this moment is for you to walk by faith, to express it to him in prayer, and to do so in community with other believers. Okay?