Looking at Christ

In his preface to the revised (2004) edition of  Nine Marks of a Healthy Church , Pastor Mark Dever has a very interesting potential ‘tenth mark’: “If I had to add one more mark to what you’re about to read, it wouldn’t be missions or prayer or worship; but it would touch on all of those things. I think that I would add that we want our congregations to be outward-looking. We are to be upwardly focused – God-centered. But we are also, I think, supposed to reflect God’s own love as we look out on other people and on other congregations. This can show itself in many ways. I long for our congregation to integrate better our vision for global missions and our efforts in local evangelism. If we have a commitment to help evangelize an unreached people group abroad, why haven’t we done a better job in trying to find members of this people group in our metropolitan area? Why aren’t our missions and evangelism better integrated?  We do pray in the pastoral prayer each Sunday morni...

Another great piece from Zim Okoli:  What I want us to see is that, planting churches is absolutely central to obeying the great commission. Now let me be clear. I’m not saying church planting is the only way to obey the Great Commission. For instance, one implication of the Great Commission is evangelism. Many Christians are committed to evangelism without being involved in church planting. Rather what I want us to see is that it's pretty hard to find a more fitting, more all-encompassing way to obey the Great Commission than planting churches . Going means mission by the church   Therefore go and make disciples… (Matt. 28:19) From the outset, Jesus’ intention is for his followers to be outreach-focused not inward-looking. Jesus is saying, Make disciples by going out on mission to the lost.   He already gave his disciples a taster of this back in Matthew 10. Back then he sent them out to preach the gospel to Jews, saying to them, “ As you go , proclaim this...