Ask anyone what the purpose of the church is, and you will get answers like \u201cMaking the world a better place,\u201d or \u201cHelping people \u2018do life\u2019 better,\u201d or even \u201cIntroducing people to Jesus Christ.\u201d\u00a0 These are all good, and all true; the purpose of the church includes all of this, and much more.\u00a0 But the most important thing we are meant to do, and which Jesus Himself identified as our \u201cmission\u201d or our \u201cmarching orders\u201d is found in Matthew 28:<\/p>\n
Matthew 28:19\u201320 (ESV)<\/p>\n
19<\/sup> Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20<\/sup> teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.\u201d<\/p>\n This is known as the Great Commission.\u00a0 And from this we get our \u201cmission statement\u201d, \u201cTo make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Somehow, over the course of years, we have lost this sense of purpose. We have mistaken the method for the mission. We have continued to \u201cdo church\u201d by doing programs and ministries which may or may not have been grounded in this mission, but over time we have substituted the programs for our\u00a0singular mission, our commission, to \u201cmake disciples\u201d. We have shifted the focus away from disciple-making to church-member-making. And it hasn\u2019t served us well.<\/p>\n We must make disciple-making our highest priority. We must work on our own discipleship growth and we must invite others to consider following Jesus and to help them (mentor and train them )to grow in their discipleship.<\/p>\n The early Methodists got this right. We need to recover our heritage and begin (again) to make disciples.\u00a0 The early Methodists used Class Meetings and Band Meetings to accomplish this goal, coupled with Bible preaching and teaching. You\u2019ll be hearing a lot more about these things in the coming months.\u00a0 I invite you to pray for God\u2019s leading in recovering our disciple-making heritage, and thus, our purpose for existing!<\/p>\n In Christ,<\/p>\n Pastor Glen<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ask anyone what the purpose of the church is, and you will get answers like \u201cMaking the world a better place,\u201d or \u201cHelping people \u2018do life\u2019 better,\u201d or even \u201cIntroducing people to Jesus Christ.\u201d\u00a0 These are all good, and all true; the purpose of the church includes all of this, and much more.\u00a0 But the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,39,113,102,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-news","category-local-outreach","category-newsletters","category-pastoral","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3968,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions\/3968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}