As I said several months ago, the mission of our church is to “to make disciples of Jesus Christ who love God and love people, by reaching and teaching everyone.“

I have already examined the overarching mission of the church (to make disciples) and have seen what a disciple should be (one who loves God and loves people). Now it’s time to consider the process by which a disciple is made.

Matthew 28:19-20 breaks discipleship down into two stages. First, Jesus tells the apostles to preach and evangelize, which culminates in some hearers believing and new converts being “baptized.” Second, the apostles were to train these new disciples through a life-long process of “teaching them to obey.” This two-step process that Jesus outlined two thousand years ago still continues in His church today. At First Southern Baptist, we call these two steps “reaching and teaching.”

For the sake of strategic planning in the church, I’ve found Peter Bolt’s little book Mission Minded (available through Matthias Media) to be extremely helpful. He breaks down evangelism (reaching) and edification (teaching) into several sub categories. Let’s look just at the “reaching” phase today.

Bolt observes that most non-Christians naturally progress through four phases in evangelism:

• Raising Awareness. This is the very first an unbeliever hears about Jesus, the Bible, the gospel, or a particular church. At this point, there’s no personal contact. A church may raise awareness in their community by having a church building, church sign, website, door hangers, an ad in the paper, sending out mailers, etc.
• Initial Contact. For the first time, an unbeliever now meets a real person. He no longer associate Christianity merely with a church building, a book, media reports, or a local advertisement, but with a flesh-and-blood person he has actually met. Churches can facilitate contact by being friendly to their neighbors and co-workers, canvassing a neighborhood with surveys, hosting a booth at a local fair, doing service projects, joining local clubs and organizations, etc.
• Pre-evangelism. The unbeliever is now getting to know his Christian friend better and a stronger relationship is forming. Deeper issues may start to be discussed like family problems, fears, hopes, dreams, and spiritual beliefs. The Christian may start to drop seeds and respond to some of the common objections or confusing aspects of Christianity. At this point, the Christian is trying to show the love of Christ and “earn the right” to share his faith in a spirit of love and trust.
• Evangelism. The ultimate goal of steps 1-3 is to get us to the point where the unbeliever actually hears the good news. If this never happens, then the person has never truly been evangelized. All the good deeds and acts of social justice in the world are impotent to rescue a soul from hell. Only the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16-17). Evangelism may happen in one event, or over a series of conversations. But e need to know, explain, and biblically support the basic gospel outline: God is the loving and holy creator of the universe; man has rebelled against God and become separated from Him; Jesus, God’s Son became a man to rescue us; He lived perfectly and then died in our place, rising again on the third day; He now calls us to turn from our sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the only proper response, and the only way to eternal life.

Obviously, there’s no “formula” to saving the lost. There are times when steps 1-3 happen almost instantaneously, or when steps 2-3 can be bypassed altogether. Most importantly, we recognize that while man plants and waters, only God gives the increase (1 Cor. 3:6). And so our church humbly uses this ministry model, while praying and relying completely on God to do His miraculous work of changing hearts of stone into hearts of flesh.

Compassion International in Colorado Springs made an exciting announcement on Wednesday:

Compassion International, a leading child development and sponsorship organization, reached a major milestone today as they celebrate the sponsorship of their 1 millionth child, an 8-year-old boy from the country of Togo in West Africa.

The newly sponsored child lives with his father outside Togo’s capital city of Lomé. Togo, a country whose population is seriously affected by the devastation of AIDS, is the most recent country to join the growing list of nations where Compassion works.

The child’s sponsor is from South Korea, the country in which Compassion began its mission 57 years earlier. The sponsor is most recently noted for a gold medal she won at last year’s Beijing Olympics.

Each sponsorship typically includes education, spiritual instruction, a nourishing meal, and basic health care. This millionth sponsorship was specially timed to coincide with the one million mark. But while every sponsorship may not be quite so glamorous, every single one is still a heartwarming story of love and compassion in the name of Jesus Christ. May God bless Compassion International and enable them to reach another million children in the years to come.

Tim Keller was recently interviewed by Towers Online, the news service for Southern Seminary. I really appreciated his warning about the idolatry of success in ministry.

Question: What safeguards should 20-something pastors have in place to avoid the idolatry of ministry fame and the attitude of big numbers equals success?

Tim Keller: If you know it is a danger, that is a very important start. Additionally, when you find yourself unusually discouraged because things aren’t growing or people aren’t listening to you — you have to catch yourself. You have to realize “This is an inordinate amount of discouragement, which reveals the idolatry of justification by ministry.” Meaning, you say you believe in justification by grace, but you feel like and are acting like you believe in justification by ministry. You have to recognize you are making something of an idol out of ministry. When you do experience inordinate discouragement because things aren’t going well, you need to say, “It’s okay to be discouraged but not to be this discouraged. This is discouragement that leads to idolatry,” and you repent.

Additionally, idols create a fantasy world. You may think that you are just thinking about ministry strategy, but it could be you’re fantasizing about success. So be careful about doing too much daydreaming about success, what you would like to see happen. Because it’s really a kind of pornography. You’re actually thinking about a beautiful church and people acclaiming you: be careful about fantasizing too much about ministry success and dreaming about it and thinking about what it’s going to look like.