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Every Part Doing its Work

“The redemptive genius of God is seen not so much in that He gathers His Church on Sunday but that He scatters it on Monday.”

– Dr. David Moore drawing from Jerry Cook.

Last week I had the privilege of being the guest lecturer in a doctoral class in a local seminary. I was there to speak about trends in world evangelization, but as is often the case, I got off the immediate subject and the class ended up in a discussion of transformation. I think the question that led us down this other path was, “How does a society go from full churches to single digit evangelicalism in one generation?” Well that led to a discussion of how such a negative trend could take place, and then onto a discussion of how believers can be activated to move the trend line in the opposite direction, and actually take ground.

I suggested that throughout the Bible and history, that when the institutions of society go haywire, we see God raising up prophets to speak truth to those institutions, and I went on to suggest that church should prepare believers to take on a prophetic role in life so that believers can prophesy (with words where necessary) to the institutions of society that they interact with (see A Transformation Paradigm, Momentum Magazine). I said, “Too often churches get sidetracked into trying to draw people into the activities of the church rather than empowering them to be effective Monday through Saturday.”

Well there were quite a few pastors in the class, so even though I thought I heard the sound of the ice cracking under my feet, I ventured further. I said that, “Too often pastors believe that Sunday morning 10AM is where it’s at.” Well this elicited quite a few questions, but I didn’t see anyone taking up stones, so I was encouraged (this was a wonderful group of people) and we went on to have a great class and a stimulating discussion of ways that a church can focus outwardly (Church Expanding) verses inwardly (Church Contracting).

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	Church Contracting	Church Expanding
Resources and Energies	Inwardly focused	Externally focused
Corporate Gatherings	The main event	A Huddle (as in American Football). An opportunity for the Lord to call the play.
Appeal to Members	Attend the meetings get involved in church	Engage society get involved in community
Perception of non-clergy roles	Second class.	Other vocations dignified every believer seen as called of God.
Model Member	Works hard to support the ministries of the church.	Does the ministry of the church in the world (salt and light)
Perception of the World	Big Bad Wolf: Adversarial role	A harvest field
Message to the World	Shame on you!	Truth in Love
Strategic Stance	Defensive – try to hold ground	Missional – try to take ground

Ephesians chapter four gives what I consider to be one of the most apt descriptions of discipleship in the New Testament. It states that five fold servants (or four fold if you prefer) should use their gifts to equip God’s people to do the work of ministry.

I would like to suggest that the primary purpose of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers is to equip God’s people to be effective in their ministry to a lost world Monday through Saturday. Our primary metrics for effectiveness in these roles should be derived from scriptures like Ephesians four. Not merely from things like church attendance or the level of involvement that parishioners have in church programs.

Metric	Reference
People prepared for effective ministry	To prepare God’s people for works of service (v. 12)
Unity in the faith	Unity in the faith (v. 13)
Intimacy with Christ	Knowledge of the Son of God (v. 13)
Maturity as Christ-likeness	Mature, attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (v. 13)
Resistant to false doctrine	No longer infants…[easily] tossed to and fro…by [false] teaching. (v. 14)
Compassionately Prophetic	Speaking the truth in love (this is that prophetic ministry thing I am talking about — v. 15)
Christ centered holistic development	In all things growing up into Christ (v. 15)
Growth and Expansion	Growing and building itself (the church) up in love (v. 16)
Comprehensive involvement	Each part doing its work (v. 16)

I remember hearing the story of a pastor flying home from a conference. During the flight the lady in the seat next to him found out he was a pastor, so as they circled the city in preparation to landing, she asked, “Where is your church? Can we see it from here?” He thought for a minute, and then pointed to the smokestack of a factory and said, “Let me tell you about Bob, he came to the Lord three years ago,” and then he pointed to the hospital and said, “Let me tell you about Jane,” and then to the shipyards, and to the school, and to a farm on the edge of town, and so forth until the plane began its decent. You see this pastor understood where the action is really at.

I suppose I am writing about this because, I am concerned about the problem of a disengaged church, and I dream of a global church that is equipped along the lines of Ephesians four, with “each part doing its work.” This is of particular importance to those of us who are endeavoring to see the Kingdom extended and the Church planted among every kindred, nation, tongue and tribe. Important because it will have a direct bearing on the replicability and resilience of the churches planted.

We have all been troubled by situations around the world where the church has had significant numerical growth but natural and moral evil still abounds. Could this be because we have majored on missionary methods that focus on quantitative vs. qualitative measures of success? It appears that this approach can leave us with a mere Christian glaze on a worldly ham. I believe that a transformational model of mission will actually contribute positively to the resilience and longevity of Christian movements. I hope to pursue this vein in future blogs.

Jason is a contributing editor with Momentum Magazine. He serves as a missionary with Calvary International and works as a strategist with the Regent Center for Entrepreneurship in Virginia Beach. He has written a book on business as mission titled Eden Inc.

Other Related Posts

• A Transformation Paradigm
• The Two Trees
• Measuring the beginnings of a church planting movement
• For Profit Structures in Mission Movements
• Podcast 3: a time of historic church growth?

© 2008 Momentum Magazine.
Related: The Mission Manual · Justin Long's Annotated Links and Notes