Con­tents

In the after­math and decline of Chris­tian­ity in Amer­ica, many Chris­tians are ask­ing the ques­tion, what went wrong? Why is God tak­ing His hand of bless­ing off of the United States? Sim­ply put, Chris­tian­ity got dis­tracted from its mission.

What is the mis­sion of Christianity?

Matt 28:19 Go ye there­fore, and teach all nations, bap­tiz­ing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20 Teach­ing them to observe all things what­so­ever I have com­manded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen.

Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

This is really easy but most won’t get it right even so. The mis­sion, pri­mary and essen­tial, of Chris­tian­ity is to present the gospel to the unsaved (evan­ge­lism), and to incor­po­rate the con­verts of that effort into a local church. What most Chris­tians reac­tion to this is “yes, I agree”, but really, they don’t. Instead of fol­low­ing the bib­li­cal pat­tern of evan­ge­lism they do and finan­cially sup­port some­thing else, and instead of attend­ing, par­tic­i­pat­ing in, and finan­cially sup­port­ing a bib­li­cal church, they put their efforts, ener­gies, and resources (at least the major­ity of these things) into some­thing else.

Sec­ondly, our mis­sion is sim­ply a con­tin­u­a­tion of Jesus Christ’s mis­sion of sav­ing the world. In John 14:12, Christ fore­sees and fore­tells of us who will con­tinue his work. “For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost” (Mat 18:11). We are fish­ers of men (Mat 4:19). Paul says that “God… has rec­on­ciled us to Him­self through Jesus Christ, and has given us the min­istry of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion” (2Cor 5:18).

Before I leave the “mis­sion of Chris­tian­ity”, con­sider that every­thing in the Scrip­tures is brought under that con­cept of our mis­sion. What is impor­tant, essen­cial, and com­manded by God for us to do, basi­cally has to do with evan­ge­lism (our tes­ti­mony of Christ in the world), or our being a part of the body of Christ in a local church.

Bib­li­cal Evangelism

What is “bib­li­cal evan­ge­lism”? Sim­ply put, it is to go to where the unsaved are, and present the gospel to them. It means going to their houses, busi­nesses, and places of work, where they occupy their life, and pre­sent­ing the gospel to them there. Seems most churches have some type of evan­ge­lism, and every­body thinks “what they do” in evan­ge­lism is bib­li­cal, but this is not true, and we all need to go back to the draw­ing board, to the Word of God, to check if we truly are “bib­li­cal” in our evangelism.

Evan­ge­lism is the plan of sal­va­tion, noth­ing else

Some churches think evan­ge­lism is going door to door to take a reli­gious sur­vey, or invite the unsaved to church BBQ. This is not evan­ge­lism. Even invit­ing the unsaved to come hear the gospel pre­sented in a ser­vice is not evan­ge­lism. Evan­ge­lism is actu­ally you giv­ing the gospel to an unsaved per­son so they under­stand it and get saved. So the first thing is, if there is no bib­li­cal pre­sen­ta­tion of Jesus as the Sav­iour of the world, there is no bib­li­cal evan­ge­lism being involved.

Some­where in the mod­ern­iza­tion of churches and the min­istry, we got an idea that we are evan­ge­liz­ing by just invit­ing. We are sup­port­ive of evan­ge­lism if we invite other to hear the gospel, but evan­ge­lism is only and absolutely only the pre­sen­ta­tion of the gospel to the unsaved.

Here peo­ple mis­un­der­stand and extend the con­cept to unbib­li­cal extremes. China is a closed coun­try to the gospel. When I met a mis­sion­ary to main­land China, I wanted to sit and talk with him about his min­istry in China. Come to find out that he has an orphan­age, and that he has about 100 chil­dren in his care. He uses mis­sion­ary sup­port from churches for this. I asked if he gets to wit­ness to these young chil­dren and teach them the Bible. His answer shocked me. “No, the gov­ern­ment chooses who one of our paid work­ers is, and they have their plant in our work­ers. We can­not give the gospel openly nor in pri­vate to any child, we can­not teach the Bible, nor can we speak of reli­gion.” I asked him if he has a church, and his answer was no, that they go to a “for­eign­ers church” that the Chi­nese per­mit to exist.

Our mis­sion is to present the gospel of Jesus Christ to the unsaved, and get them “churched”. Any­thing that takes a form other than that is not bib­li­cal evan­ge­lism. This is the social gospel which threats to over­take bib­li­cal mis­sions com­pletely, and “we” (Amer­i­can Chris­tian­ity) is happy to let it do so.

Evan­ge­lism is not the “social gospel”.

Many churches have totally replaced the plan of sal­va­tion with the social gospel as their prin­ci­pal time, energy, finan­cial, and resource pri­or­ity. Every­thing in their churches revolve around a social aspect of the Chris­t­ian life. Although this is impor­tant, it is not the pri­mary mis­sion of the church, and there­fore should occupy a lower place in our efforts and sacrifices.

Build­ing houses, edu­cat­ing the unskilled for good jobs, and all other such types of things are good, but they are not to be our “pri­mary inter­est” the first thing we seek, the thing that sat­u­rates our think­ing and activ­i­ties, nor the thing we totally invest our lives in. The only thing that can occupy that place is our sal­va­tion, and our sal­va­tion includes con­fess­ing Christ to unsaved people.

Evan­ge­lism is a “per­sonal” pre­sen­ta­tion of the gospel to an unsaved.

I am sorry, but I have to insist that this evan­ge­lism be “per­sonal”. This reaches so deep that I can­not remain silent about it. Some­where Satan has inserted in our Chris­t­ian think­ing that “I per­son­ally don’t have to evan­ge­lize, but our church does it, our mis­sion­ar­ies do it, and since I am part of our church and give finan­cially, that is all that I need.” One of the con­se­quences of this atti­tude (besides not pre­sent­ing the gospel to oth­ers) is that most Chris­tians are clue­less if they should find them­selves in the sit­u­a­tion of a will­ing unsaved want­ing to be savd. They don’t know what to say. Unfor­tu­nately all this is a grave error. Romans 10:8–13 speaks of our sal­va­tion, and marks sal­va­tion as a (1) belief in our heart, and (2) a con­fes­sion of our mouth. How do you con­fess Christ? “Whoso­ever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (10:11). So this is the prob­lem, sal­va­tion is a pub­lic con­fes­sion of Christ, and this in its essence is evan­ge­lism. He who is ashamed of Christ as his sav­iour is not saved (Mat 10:32–33). I do not think this is a works sal­va­tion, because giv­ing pub­lic tes­ti­mony to who saved you is not a work, but it is express­ing your faith.

You can­not have other peo­ple believe for you to get you to heaven, and nei­ther can you have other peo­ple give con­fes­sion of Christ (evaneglism) for you to com­ply with this essen­tial aspect of sal­va­tion. Pub­lic con­fes­sion of our faith is at the heart of the gospel, and peo­ple who can­not (not able) or will not (not want­ing to) are peo­ple who are clear exam­ples of saved peo­ple. Some­thing is gravely wrong with these peo­ple and their think­ing, and even though I am not one to judge, I have to read my Bible and I see all Chris­tians give tes­ti­mony to their faith, and the lack of that is because their faith is false.

This is per­sonal. Each and every indi­vid­ual needs to con­fess Christ pub­licly, and they need to have a mind set of “pub­licly con­fess­ing Christ”. The idea of mis­sions, or sup­port­ing mis­sion­ar­ies, is born in this mind­set. Peo­ple sac­ri­fice finan­cially to sup­port this work around the globe because this is their heart, so they do it locally, and they see that it is done globally.

A “Bib­li­cal” Local Church

When we come to the idea of get­ting the con­verts of evan­ge­lism into the con­gre­ga­tion of the peo­ple of God, this is also flawed and gravely wrong in many people’s think­ing. Our sal­va­tion exists in one form as our being iden­ti­fied in the peo­ple of God, being one mem­ber of the Body of Christ. Our iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as part of the Body of Christ is exactly what makes us saved, or is a result of our faith in Jesus Christ. Some­how, Satan has so twisted our con­cepts that now, the Body of Christ is not really a local church, but some­thing else.

What is the body of Christ?

In the Bible, the church has a spe­cific local def­i­n­i­tion or rep­re­sen­ta­tion. To under­stand this, take the par­al­lel con­cept of mar­riage. What is mar­riage? It is two peo­ple who make a com­mitt­ment between them­selves as hus­band and wife. So is there any such thing as a “uni­ver­sal mar­riage”? No. We speak of mar­ried peo­ple in gen­eral, or uni­ver­sally as mar­riage, and every one of them has to qual­ify by being locally united to a per­son of the oppose sex. Is it mar­riage when 3 women and 3 men live in com­mon? How about 2 men? How about 2 women? No. Mar­riage has a def­i­n­i­tion, and although we can speak broadly about mar­riage, the def­i­n­i­tion has to go back to that 1 woman and 1 man, mak­ing a unique and only those two commitment.

The church con­cept is the same. Nobody is a part of a church with­out being a part of a church. The basis of entrance is a local church, and then we can speak of the uni­ver­sal church, but nobody is part of the uni­ver­sal church with­out some qual­i­fy­ing local mem­ber­ship some­where. The Bible never presents any N.T. believer liv­ing out­side of any local church. Every­where the peo­ple accepted the Lord, they formed local churches. You can get tech­ni­cal and say what about a man on his dying bed that accepts Christ? Okay, maybe there are some excep­tions, but the fact and rule remains, and we insist that, every NT Chris­t­ian enters a local church mem­ber­ship shortly after sal­va­tion, or wit­nesses to oth­ers, and with those that get saved, they form a local church. That is the rule, the norm, what is almost always going to hap­pen. If you want to be the excep­tion, accept the Lord and quickly die, and maybe, just maybe, you will be the exception.

Peo­ple who refuse the con­gre­gat­ing, par­tic­i­pa­tion, sup­port, and fel­low­ship of fel­low believ­ers are not saved. Christ never saved an indi­vid­ual that he didn’t place into the body of Christ. Being in the body, they are mem­bers of His body (many indi­vid­u­als in one).

This whole con­cept seems to have fallen under the attacks of Satan, and is now out of fash­ion with most of Chris­tian­ity. Either peo­ple don’t go to church (unless they need church for a wed­ding or funeral), or they make church into a freak, some­thing totally oppo­site and scary in com­par­i­sion to the NT con­cept of “church”.

Evan­ge­lism is not get­ting peo­ple into “Chris­t­ian organizations”

Hav­ing been a pas­tor for now 24 years, it is my sad obser­va­tion that none of the mod­ern Chris­t­ian reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions “work.” They don’t work, they are broke, they don’t func­tion for the pur­pose that they intend to be. The Nav­i­ga­tors group wants to dis­ci­pline new con­verts. I am sorry, but this doesn’t work. Bible stud­ies done by groups out­side the local church end up being power plays where evil peo­ple (good at first sight) end up want­ing to con­trol new con­verts. The only bib­li­cal and func­tion­ing way to make peo­ple grow is to put them into the flock of God, and that they get fed with the rest of the sheep. Indi­vid­ual Bible stud­ies may be good at some level, but as an aux­il­iary for a tem­po­rary time until the per­son can func­tion fully in the body of Christ.

Even shep­herds take a sickly new­born and gives it a bot­tle to help it through a rough spot in its life. But no sheep will be a good sheep, if you always cud­dle it in your arms and bot­tle feed it. Sheep have to walk the fields, and graze with the rest. This is an impor­tant rule that seems to be ignored to the harm of the sheep, and harm to the body of Christ.

Chris­t­ian radio sta­tions, Chris­t­ian sum­mer camps, Bible Insti­tutes, Bible col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, coun­sel­ing cen­ters, and a host of other min­istries are not a church. God has struc­tured that only in a local church, defined and func­tion­ing as God has imposed on all, only that church will truly give the Chris­t­ian what he needs.

As a pas­tor, I see the fail­ures and imma­ture peo­ple in our church (always there are some), and the offenses and prob­lems between these peo­ple, and I despair some­times. I got to the point where I just can­not keep peace between all these peo­ple. Then I real­ized, this is all wrong. I am not sup­posed to keep the peace. This is how God has designed things so that these peo­ple grow and mature. Tak­ing crit­i­cisms and per­sonal attacks is part of “grow­ing up” (being mature). The local church is a dynamic of good and bad, mature and imma­ture. What hap­pens is that God uses the imma­ture Chris­tians to grow the mature ones, if, and only if, the mature Chris­tians are participating.

Christ’s body (the church) is a self relat­ing, self-edifying, com­mu­nity of faith

Rom 12:4 For as we have many mem­bers in one body, and all mem­bers have not the same office: 5 So we, [being] many, are one body in Christ, and every one mem­bers one of another.

This con­cept of our “com­mu­nity of faith” is one in which we need to under­stand is at the very heart of our sal­va­tion. Our sal­va­tion is based on Christ plac­ing us in this “com­mu­nity of faith” group. The con­fused Chris­t­ian who thinks he is going to heaven, but rejects the con­cept of being a live, par­tic­i­pat­ing part of the com­mu­nity of faith, is just on one hand pro­claim­ing sal­va­tion, and on the other deny­ing it. This com­mu­nity of faith is always and only seen in the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the indi­vid­ual in a local church of some type, form, or style. He is with other like believ­ers in spir­i­tual activ­ity and fel­low­ship. To some peo­ple, you would think that Satan is behind every church, pas­tor, and dea­con in the world, and there are no true churches, nei­ther is the church-pastor-deacon sys­tem even of God. Well, God gave it to us, and granted the major­ity of churches in the world are far from being like the model Christ gave us, but the sys­tem is still divine, and if the peo­ple use and work the sys­tem God has given us, it will work.

Our churches have gone very far from the Bible’s teach­ing when it is accept­able to get new con­verts enrolled in the typ­i­cal Christian’s religious-social action groups (his reli­gious polit­i­cal group, his Chris­t­ian radio sta­tion, his favorite Chris­t­ian uni­ver­sity, his favorite Chris­t­ian books, etc), but leaves vacant the com­mu­nity of faith which is the local church. A sin­cere Chris­t­ian can grow and be a spir­i­tual God-pleasing Chris­t­ian with just attend­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a good local church and not hav­ing any of these other rela­tion­ships, but no Chris­t­ian can please God if he isn’t attend­ing, par­tic­i­pat­ing, and sup­port­ing a good local church. Think about that long and hard. So why do we push new con­verts into a dozen or two things which will not grow him, and neglect what will? This is how we have “missed our mis­sion”, and this is why our Chris­tians of our day are so sorry, weak, and insi­pant. They sim­ply are baby Chris­tians, fol­low­ing the Chris­t­ian fades, all of which revolve around one of two things: (1) mak­ing some “min­istry” money, or (2) con­trol of the brethren.

Life in the com­mu­nity of faith (which accord­ing the NT is a local church, because there is noth­ing else seen nor pre­sented to us as the com­mu­nity of faith of 1st cen­tury Chris­tian­ity) is what grows Chris­tians. There are direct oppo­sites (night clubs, ball clubs, social groups, etc), and there are com­peti­tors, things which sim­ply suck up all our time in sup­pos­edly “reli­gious” activ­i­ties but in truth, does not return any­thing sub­stan­tial spir­i­tu­ally speaking.

Series Nav­i­ga­tion

Copy­right sense and non-sense