Encourager Article

"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, " 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' This is the great and foremost commandment. "The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' (Matthew 22:36-39 NASB)

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20 NASB)

I put these passages at the first of this article for a reason. We have lost focus! If I were to ask the question, “What does Welsh Memorial Baptist Church exist for?” I am sure I would get a variety of answers from different people. But, I want you to seriously ask yourself that question and think about your answer not from a personal stand-point but a biblical stand-point. What does the bible say about why we exist?

Personally, my answer would come from those two passages at the beginning of this article. I think it would look something like this on paper. “Welsh Memorial Baptist Church exist first, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbor by tell them about the wonderful gift that God has given us in His son, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, for our sins, and was raised on the third day so that we might have eternal life. We seek to baptize them by immersion and to build up all who come in the knowledge of God’s revealed word so that they can live the wonderful life that God has called them to live.”

The question is how do we loose focus in a church? My personal answer is when we start looking internally at ourselves and not eternally and what God desires. William Temple was right when he said, “A church is the only organization that exists primarily for the benefit of non-members.”

We do what we do as a church for those outside the church and leaving the results up to God. It’s like what is said in any evangelism training I have ever gone through, you sow the seed and leave the results up to God. I believe if we held 100 events every year that presented people with the truth of who Jesus is and no one trusted him as savior or came to our church we have been faithful in what God has commanded us to do.

You look at the story of Israel in scripture and that was exactly their problem. They got so self focused and forgot about the promise that God had given them, they would turn to sin and ultimately ended up in exile.

Anytime our church reaches out to the community we must not be focused on how it benefits our church! We must ask ourselves, have we been faithful in what God has called us to do? If we can answer yes to that question, then we have done what we need to do whether we see any benefit from it!

Let us go out and fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission together and leave the results up to God!!!!!