Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

I’m glad you are listening today. This is episode 249 of Missions on Point, where we are always concerned with the centrality of the church in missions. For our current series, that means we are considering the centrality of the church in any activity that might be called a Christian ministry. The first distinction we have made is between what the church and only the church can do, and everything else. And that everything else is what we are calling parachurch ministry. Ministries that directly support the essentials of a church, and which may or may not be run by a church are called support ministries. And then last time we considered Christian vocation as a ministry, as any job that a Christian can have, now transformed by the Spirit of Christ and the power of the resurrection in a person’s life.

Today, I want us to tie all of this together and show how all of this relates to the central importance of the church. Furthermore, I want to add a fourth category of ministry to the three we’ve already talked about. Between vocation and support ministry, I would also add personal ministry. And I’ll draw attention once again to a diagram that I am using on the transcription page of this podcast at Propempo.com. Personal ministry is not what a Christian does individually as their job, and it is also not what they do when they are involved in a support ministry that is formally recognized by the church. Churches don’t have to do everything, and Christians don’t have to be only involved in ministry that the church runs. So, here’s what I would define personal ministry as: when Christians collaborate with other Christians in a ministry not run by the church.

This could be when they volunteer at the local women’s center or a gospel mission outreach. Christians can volunteer with a missions sending agency or a neighborhood children’s Bible club. Or maybe more simply, two Christians meet at work and they study the Bible together over their lunch break. The options are nearly endless. As a Christian, you ought to prioritize your local church, feeding on Christ through the means of grace there. You might also decide to participate in some of your church’s optional ministries too, which are the support ministries. And even beyond this, you might decide to participate in a ministry that is not in your church, and this is what we would call a personal ministry. It’s personal, because it’s yours and it’s not a ministry that is run by the church that you are a member of.

But, here’s what makes this category of ministry important. It helps to highlight for us the trajectory of all ministry. And by trajectory I mean the movement of a ministry as it grows. Let me illustrate this. Imagine with me the individual Christian at one end of our ministry chart in his or her vocation. And at the other end of the chart are the essential ministries of the church. Between those two endpoints we have personal ministry and then support ministry. As the individual Christian is living their life, they are praying for their coworkers and neighbors. They are seeking to be faithful to God in everything they do, both in word and deed. Showing the gospel with their lives and being ready to give a defense to anyone for the hope that they have. They pray for boldness to tell their family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers about the good news of Jesus Christ: his death and resurrection for the salvation of sinners so that we might be reconciled with God. This is their vocation. But then one of two things happens. Either the people they are evangelizing get saved or they meet someone who is already a Christian. Now the believer is not alone, they have a new brother or sister in Christ. And this is so much better than just doing something by oneself. Ideally, at this point, if that Christian is a new convert, then they are baptized into the church. And we can imagine here that there is an arrow that points from the column of vocational ministry directly to the column of the essentials of the church. This is the aim of personal evangelism: that a person becomes a disciple in the church. Any kind of evangelistic ministry that does not have the aim of baptizing believers into a local congregation is either short-sighted at best or disobedient at worst. And this arrow from vocation to essential ministry of the church is like a gravitational pull. It’s inevitable, because Christians start working together, because we can do more together than alone. And it’s inevitable because this is what Christians are designed for in worshipping God. And it moves a Christian through each of the subsequent stages of ministry. The local church has a gravitational pull on Christians.

But let’s not end the story there. Imagine what happens next. Now there are two Christians, and they are either both members of the same local church or they are not. If you meet someone from another church, we have the early stages of a partnership between churches. Regardless, now we have two Christians working together to shine the light of the gospel into their collective world. This is personal ministry, because it is coordinated gospel outreach among Christians, but it is not directly connected to the church. This is a kind of parachurch ministry, but it is not recognized by the church as such, and that’s ok, it doesn’t need to be. It’s simply a neighborhood outreach event, or it’s a workplace Bible study. Or maybe two Christians meet each other and they decide to work together on the basis of their convictions to provide some kind of ministry to others. It’s the seed form of a new ministry.

But what happens next? The ministry grows, and it starts to get recognized by the church. The church starts to see some value in supporting this work. And the reason for this is that these Christians who are coming together start doing the things that the church is called to do. Their personal ministry starts to teach biblical doctrine, and it starts to invite others into the worship of God. And these things are the charge of the church. Maybe in that workplace Bible study, they start to run into some tough theological questions, and they start to raise those questions with their pastors. Maybe more disciples are being made, and they need to have an easier pathway to a church in order to be baptized. As the ministry grows, it inevitably becomes a support ministry of the church.

And even as support ministries grow, they too start to look more and more like the church. They start to offer ministries for their members that you would typically find in a church. Maybe it’s a worship service. Maybe it’s discipleship, or what some ministries call “member care.” And this is a natural inevitable move, because the ministry of the church is what Christians are meant to gravitate toward. And parachurch ministries remain healthy as long as they recognize this arrow, the movement toward becoming a church.  And the church must remain as the priority for any ministry. Healthy parachurch ministries feed the church and lead their members into it, and they don’t take the place of the church and do the essential ministries that only the church is supposed to be doing. All parachurch ministries are meant to lead people to the church to find there what they cannot find anywhere else.

Of course, this is the main problem. Many people do not see the church as essential and irreplaceable. Many people think that they can find the functions of the church in other ways. Their mission agency does missions better. Their college group does worship better. And their work group has a better Bible study.

To address this, I want to give you eight reasons why all ministries must move toward the church. While keeping the priority of the church in view, the progress of ministry and making disciples leads people toward the essential ministry of the church. Here are eight reasons for this.

1. The worship of God demands it. 1 Corinthians 14 tells us that unbelievers who enter the gathered church in worship will be convicted in their hearts and know that God is really among the church. God has designed the church to be the place where he is rightly worshipped this side of eternity.
2. Obedience to God demands it. God has designed the local church. He intends for it to be a priority. We don’t have to understand all the reasons why we should do something in order to obey the clear teaching of God that we prioritize the church. Believers cannot say that they are being obedient to God when they are not a part of the church.
3. The gospel demands it. Local churches are the guardians of the gospel. In order to protect the integrity of the gospel, we must prioritize the local church. Without the church, the gospel is not held forth as primary in ministry and all sorts of other purposes crowd out this all-important task of proclaiming the gospel.
4. Evangelism demands it. The church is the only institution where everyone is welcome and called to faith in Jesus Christ. All other institutions limit their membership somehow. True evangelism does not happen if it does not lead a person toward the church.
5. Discipleship demands it. The church is the only institution where people receive instruction on obeying Jesus from people in every stage of life and for people in every stage of life. Most other discipleship opportunities you might find will be with people who are similar to you, but the church is full of people from every stage and walk of life.
6. Love demands it. The church is the only place where the commands to love one another can be obeyed in their fullest. Sure you can show the love of Christ elsewhere, but the church is full of people that are hard to love.
7. The care of souls demands it. Nowhere else can you find shepherds for your soul who know your life intimately and can provide spiritual oversight and discipline for every believer. The church commissions its members to formal ministry and sends out its people as missionaries.
8. Global missions demands it. God wants the church to reproduce more churches in the world. We can’t do missions without the church because it is the beginning and end of missions.

I’m sure we could add to this list, but the point is simply this: no matter what ministry you have, whether that’s your vocation, a personal ministry you are involved in, or a formally recognized support ministry, we are to be always moving the people we minister to toward the essential ministry of the church. The church is not just an optional add-on to the Christian life. It’s the central fixture of our worship of God.

And may God be glorified in the church as Christians work out their salvation in every conceivable way in life. Praise God because he has given us his word, directing us to love the bride of Christ. And may we all, no matter what we are doing, focus our energies on participating with God in his project to purify his bride and see local churches multiplied all over the face of the earth.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at Propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.