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Pastor's Points May 2016

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Dear Church Family,

Recently I have been reading a little book called, Understanding the Great Commission and in this little book it list four practices of a Great Commission church.  Of course, we know that this is a reference to Matthew 28:18-20 where Jesus gave his final command to his followers before ascending to heaven.  Here are the four practices of a great
commission church as enumerated in Mark Devers book.

  1. Cultivate a Culture of Discipleship among its own members.
  2. Cultivate a Culture of Evangelism.
  3. Work to reach the unreached through missions.
  4. Look for internationals in your own city.

 

  • I found this take on the Great Commission interesting because of where God has us right now as a church family. As I shared with you last month we are in the process of evaluating how we as a church encourage our members to “grow”.  And to cultivate a culture of discipleship in our church we need to help every member own the responsibility for helping other believers grow in the faith.  Pastors are to equip the saints for the work of the ministry (Eph. 4:11-12), which means the work of the ministry belongs to all the saints. 

  • Second, we need to make sure that we are encouraging a culture of evangelism as well. You need to be confident that when you invite your non-Christian friends to one of our worship services that they are going to hear the gospel clearly proclaimed.  But also we need to make sure that we are training our church family in evangelism so that you will be prepared and confident to share your faith when the opportunity comes your way.  And finally, the church can also provide resources that you can use to give to your non-believing friends to help encourage conversations about who Jesus is.

  • Third, we need to continue to reach out to unreached people through our mission’s effort. We do this through giving monetarily to our mission offerings.  We need to continue to encourage this giving, but we also need to continue to encourage our church family to go on mission as well.  We have many opportunities to go on mission through our church mission trips in the U.S., but also with our ministry partner Culture Waves Global to reach the unreached
     peoples of the world.

  • Finally, we can participate in looking for internationals in our own city as we work together to support our new Spanish church plant that is starting in June. We are looking to effectively reach out to those who may not speak
    English with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  You can participate by praying for our church planter and his wife Alfonso and Wendy Soto.  Also, if you speak Spanish we would love to talk to you about helping us as we look to communicate through all of the details of the start-up of the Spanish speaking church plant.

 

I am so thankful to be a part of a church that loves the Great Commission!!!  I cannot wait to see what God has in store right around the corner!!


I love you and I love being your pastor,

 Pastor Alan

Posted by Alan Scott with