Value #4 -- External Focus

We believe the church must be externally focused, first toward our community, then toward the world, serving people and introducing them to Jesus.

When Jesus founded the church, He founded it as a missionary organization.  We are called to love and care for each other, but the orientation of the church must always be that we exists to serve others.  Just as Jesus said He didn't come to be served but to serve, the church as the body of Christ is also called to serve those outside its walls.

The first three values we've discussed so far are pretty much no-brainers for a Christian Church.  Jesus has to be our center, the Bible is God's clearest communication with us about how we should live and prayer is essential to every Christian's life and to the effectiveness of the church.  But now we're going to get into some values that seem to us to be central to the function of the church, but not every church operates in this way.

Many people will say about the church, that it's good for churches to do outreach, but really their main job is to study the Bible, or have great worship together or great fellowship.  But our belief that the church is essentially externally focused stems from two things:  1) Jesus' founding of the church; and 2) The nature of the spiritual life as modeled by Jesus.

First, when we look at Jesus' founding of the church in Matthew 16, He says He is the foundation of the church and "the gates of Hades will not overcome it."  What we should notice here is that gates are a defensive weapon.  So the picture Jesus paints is of the church going on the offensive against the powers of Hades, infiltrating our society with the weapons of the Kingdom (which is another topic altogether).  Also, as Jesus was ascending to heaven, His command to His disciples was to "go and make disciples."  The church has many benefits for believers, but the purpose of the church is to expand God's Kingdom.

Second, we believe this not just for the church but for each individual as well.  Some people will say that the result of spiritual growth is greater knowledge of Scripture, or deeper or more emotional worship experiences or charismatic gifts.  As great as those things are, they aren't the end-result of the spiritual life.  Our goal is to be Christ-like.  When Jesus explained His own personal "mission statement" (if you will), over and over, He says things like, "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many," and instructs us to do the same.

So when it comes to your own spiritual growth, you will know that you're making progress, when deep-down--at your very core--you believe you exist not to make yourself happy, but to serve others.  Now don't misunderstand, just because we do things for other people doesn't mean we're Christ-like, but Christ-likeness will come out of a heart that is filled with gratitude for God's grace in our lives.  If we serve out of an empty heart or out of other motives, at some point we'll become bitter.  But when service is motivated by emptying ourselves and being filled with Christ, serving will only grow us more.

The same thing goes for churches.  If the church is the "body of Christ" then we should be doing what Christ modeled for us.  The church is the new incarnation of Jesus to the world.  So for us to spend so much time focusing on ourselves is really forgetting our purpose.

Now, to be honest, we haven't done this perfectly.  Waite Park has always been know for supporting foreign missions.  For the size of our church, we give an incredible amount to our various missionaries overseas.  That's very commendable and necessary.  However, where we've fallen short is that we haven't always been externally focused when it comes to our community.  It's almost as if we jumped right to Judea, Samaria and the whole world, and skipped right over Jerusalem (Acts 1:8).  We've done projects here and there and National Night Out, which is good, but if one of our core values is that the church must be externally focused, then there will have to be some refocusing on our part.  Developing this focus is essential to the future of Waite Park.

With this in mind, over the course of the next few months, we're going to be looking at where we can be most effective and find some organizations we can partner with to be more effective in reaching our community for Jesus.