"God’s Mission : Our Mission" Acts 14:21-28 - (October 06, 2019 - 17th Sunday in Pentecost)

Grace Alone Online

Re-disovering god's mission is to rediscover your place, and your congregation's place, in that mission. While churches are thriving, growing, have large numbers, many times, the impetus of size is what drives a congregation into ministry. Many people + telling many people = more people. And, more often than not, a diversity of activities and events allow people personal preferences. However, when churches decline in membership or attendance, most start to ask, "what happened?" This question starts a process of analysis that can lead to discovering God's Mission. It can be quite illuminating as we rediscover that "getting more people in the pews" is NOT God's primary mission objective. there are many reasons why churches want to get more people "in the pew" and it usually is for sustaining and maintaining what has always been done in the past, in order to continue in the future. No. God's primary mission objective is GO AND TELL....regardless if people come to your congregation and fill the pews. A nice outcome would be that they "join" your fellowship, but God's primary mandate to us is to GO AND TELL! Today we look at the organization of the early, early Christian church and how, from it's humble beginnings, people were added (convinced of the Gospel message) to belong to the fellowship of other Christians like them. Was it programs? Was it entertainment? No. Find out. (Acts 14:21-28; Romans 16:1-16; Acts 6:1-7 form the basis for the messsage)