EXCITING NEW THINGS

Isa 43:19

 

“See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up;

do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

 

One of the unchangeable things about God is that He is always doing something new, something fresh, something unexpected.  Good news! God is up to another “new thing.” 

 

Friends, I believe that the church is being renewed in our day.  Christ is shaking His people from their old ideas of getting up on a Sunday morning and “going to church” and calling them to get up on Monday morning (and Tuesday and Wednesday) and BE the church.  For years believers have thought that “church” was all about what happened in that steepled building down the road.  But today the Lord is calling them to get out of their steepled building and minister the Gospel of grace where they live and learn and work and play. 

 

This should be no surprise.  We have known all along that the church isn’t a building.  We have all understood that the church is people who know and love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ; Christ-followers who are committed to walk as Jesus walked.  Well, remember that Jesus went to the Temple and the synagogue; He worshipped there and He taught there.  But also remember that the focus of His ministry was not the people in the Temple or the synagogue, it was the people in the streets and in the markets – a special class of people called sinners. 

 

I believe that today’s disciples – you and me – are being called to recapture and reclaim the mission of the church which is to “go and make disciples.”  The first word is essential.  The church has to “go” in order to fulfill its mission.  Church, we have to be very careful that our steepled buildings do not become fortresses that shield us from the world.  Instead, they must be outposts in the world; where the body of Christ comes to regroup, refresh, and re-train before they head back to the mission field. 

 

Steepled buildings can be beautiful and comfortable, gathering with our Christian friends to worship can be both comforting and inspiring, but those things are not our mission.  Christ has called us, as individuals and as a corporate body, to go and do.  Not just to be disciples but to be disciple makers.

 

Pastor Keith Andrews