Classic Sermon 6048: Towards a Relevant Church

We have been asked to reflect on the area of the whole Gospel and the involvement of the church in the community. I have been coming from Wisconsin for a couple of days, I was precisely asked through a training for church planters that was being carried out with the denomination 'American Baptists'.

I was asked precisely to bring a presentation on what they assigned me. The theme was: "Towards a relevant church" and I was asked to bring this workshop precisely because there is a growing knowledge and a growing conviction in denominations throughout the world, in the life of the church that in the church of Jesus Christ has We need to adopt a more open and dynamic mindset in terms of what it means to do effective ministry.

How can we become churches and spiritual communities that have an impact on our communities? And I was brought up with this topic 'A relevant church' and my goal is that we walk away from here with an idea of what it means to be an effective church in the world in which we live. And what does it mean to be a church that has an impact on the environment, on the community in which it operates?

I told the brothers that the word 'relevant' translated from English “relevant” is not an adequate translation into Spanish because the word “relevant” in English translated into Spanish would be rather current, in the sense of a church that has a relationship that has something to do with the world out there, that's what the word “relevant” means in English. In Spanish the relevant word what it means is something that stands out, something outstanding, something prominent, something difficult to ignore, something that has relief, hence the relevant word something that stands out from the crowd and truly brothers, if we look at it that way then we can say that this word fits what we want for our churches. We specifically want churches that are outstanding churches.

In what sense? We want churches that their presence, I say, the community is hard to ignore. It is like a mountain that you see, a mountain is not ignored because it is there present, visible. His presence is imposed on the horizon and my goal as Pastor and I know that many of us who are here for our churches -whether we are lay people or we are pastors- is precisely to build churches that are relevant churches, churches that have an impact on the life of the community. community, churches that are hard to ignore whose action, whose life, whose ministries demand the attention and focus of the people out there. That is our goal.

I say that a relevant church, a current church, an impact church and I am going to point out some characteristics: it is a church that glorifies God because after that it is the main purpose of the church. A relevant, impressive church that has an integral Gospel is a presence, as I have said, impossible to ignore.

It is a church that has a good reputation in the community, that people know that there is goodwill and that the congregation is a resource for the problems and needs that the community focuses on. That relevant church is an agent for the transformation of lives, it is a source of transformation of both individuals and families, as well as the entire community in which it operates. That relevant impact church is also a showcase - I could say it that way - a showcase for the kingdom of God.

What is a showcase? It's where you put the things you want people to see so they can buy them. And I believe that in our churches our goal should be that our churches become places where people look at the quality of our lives, look at the gifts that are manifested in our midst, look at the character of Christ reflected in the human relationships between brothers and sisters, looking at the blessing that is falling to the members in terms of progress for families, academic, intellectual development.

How beautiful it is when a congregation sees men and women who decide to educate themselves! For example, or open a business or learn English or learn to read and write or learn about computers, that they buy their houses, that their families are getting together, that is, if there were marital problems, that their children are growing and flourishing in a powerful way. and effective. That to me is a church; It is the type of church that we seek.

A little while ago I shared with my Congregation that passage where Paul says that he has left everything because he wants to know Christ and he says: "And to know the power of his resurrection." And that image struck me and I took that image to say that we as a church want to be a church and I believe that we all share that ideal in one way or another in which the power of Christ's resurrection is seen in the people who come to church. congregation that is impacted by their teaching, that is impacted by their values and that with the passage of time exemplify that power that was released when Christ rose from the dead.

That energy that is in the gospel to improve all aspects of human life and that is what I want when I say our churches should be a showcase. Those who see those outside may see in that church a community prospering and being blessed in all dimensions of its collective life. Say wow! Give me that, I want that, and that should be our goal. It is also a church in which prosperity and Shalom, the encompassing peace of the kingdom of God, is incarnated.

And that is why we say that a relevant church is above all a healthy church. God has built the church genetically to grow and prosper. Our churches have within them all the gifts and all the attributes they need to be healthy churches. Our goal is how to infuse those values, like a living organism. If our churches have the right conditions they will prosper and grow.

And that's why actually when we talk about a relevant church… look, we have so many different goals that we want for our churches: we want our churches to _____ a large number of people, some want their church to be a church with social impact; others want their church to be a discipleship church; others want their church to promote spiritual warfare.

No matter what, actually I like to think more: create a healthy church that has the nutrients that God has declared over his people and then that healthy church will carry out the work of the gospel in a powerful and effective way. I believe that the problem is that many times there are so many impediments and so many obstacles in the path of the church. Becoming that leafy and strong and healthy people that we are not using and getting into the character that God has actually determined for his people.

That is why the invitation is not the way to health. We have to leave that idea that if I imitate Brother Rivera's church that has social activities or I imitate Pastor Miranda's Church that has other social activities or I imitate a church that is making cells over there, or I imitate the church that has a service for new people: the seeker service, that, that somehow that is going to turn my church into a church of impact and a relevant church. None of those things really make a difference.

For a church to be a relevant, effective, powerful church, it has to understand that this concept is something organic. It is something that is related to many different parts, which is something dynamic. It is not about mechanically imitating a model.

Creating a relevant and effective community impact church that is healthy is like raising a child to grow up healthy. It takes effort, it takes time, it takes intentionality: that you know that you have to work hard and that you set certain goals for yourself. You always have to be thinking about that church as you want it to reach that level.

You have to always be giving feedback to your Congregation by sharing the vision with them, infusing, inseminating that congregation. The church has to have a clear goal of what it wants to be and what God has called it to be. That community has to have well-defined goals. One does not arrive at an effective church with community impact without proposing a goal, without proposing a vision, without understanding what God has called us to as congregations and as communities.

Here the only thing I want is to start a way of thinking about ourselves, a paradigm, that is to say, a mentality, a mental model that we can use about what it is to be an effective church and that has an integral gospel, a gospel that includes all the aspects that God wants it to cover. Actually reaching that kind of church is the work of a lifetime. It doesn't lend itself to just Scotch-taping a pattern you picked up from somewhere else.

We are never going to become a socially effective church just because they put in an English class, well I'm going to put in an English class, ah! that those have adoration there as they call contemporary or revived well then I am going to change and I am going to include musicians with electric guitar, no. There has to be a mentality, there has to be a change of sensitivity, there has to be a change of soul.

Okay, what is it that God has called us to do? What does the word of God say? What is it that pleases the heart of God? When a church does ministerial work. A church is relevant, a whole, complete gospel church. I would say one of the most important features of all is that it is outward facing. He has a mind and an externalized vision. It is not inward.

It is one of the most treacherous things in the life of a church, and that is that with the passage of time the church that started with vitality and aggressiveness little by little becomes a conservative church and a church that is oriented to satisfy its members. So that the founders are happy because their needs are being attended to so that they don't bring very strange and very different people because they don't like that because they come on Sunday to feel comfortable and to feel in a homogeneous community, where they see themselves reflected in the others. Where there aren't many youngsters who are refusals and who cause trouble because you have to keep an eye on them and where there are no children who cause problems, because if that's the case they're going to dirty the walls and no!

The church that God has in mind is an aggressive church that is always thinking about those on the outside, bringing the people on the outside, serving the people on the outside and looking for relevant ways to bring them into the arena of the church in order to impact them with the word of the gospel. It is a church that has a world mentality. One of the final words of Jesus, recorded in the gospels is, 'Go into all the world'. “Id” is a dynamic word entirely.

I believe that a church that wants to have an impact in its community has to forge a vision and a mentality as if it were an arrow: always traveling towards its target. It is a pilgrim church, it possibly has a location but its field of work is the entire city, it is a church, I would say, with a business mentality. Do you know what an entrepreneur is? I like business people. I like people who never rest and are always thinking about the new project. As leaders we have to be like that. If you lead a ministry you should always be thinking about "what's the next step?", "what's the next way I can enrich the ministry?"

Do not settle for the static, do not settle for yesterday's victory, go look for the next victory. An outward-facing church is always developing creative ways to do ministry, to reach the world. I believe that leaders have to be people with a mentality like this: creative, aggressive salesperson and we are selling the best product in the world, which is the word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is no more powerful and transforming product than the one that the Lord has left us and therefore, brothers, we must do everything possible to expose people to the beauty and use, the utility that this product has. We have to abandon that sedentary idea, brothers, that passive idea of the church: the pastor, the leader who is simply keeping time there until retirement comes. It will not be blessed.

And God free our congregation from that type of leadership, from that type of ministries. Heroic people are required, I would say, people who know that the gospel is something agonizing and that the churches also know that we are not made to be comfortable. The church is, says the Lord Jesus Christ in one of his famous passages: 'it is like yeast that a little leavens the whole lump.' And therefore the church must always be asking itself, how can we have this value that inseminates and distributes it? throughout the community?

I think of those who make pastry -I occasionally have a time I like to be a cake or a biscuit as the Caribbean call it from time to time- and you know that you are mixing the dry ingredients such as flour and sugar and salt and yeast, you have to take the flour and let's say you take the yeast, you pour it in and you have to make sure that yeast is distributed throughout all the flour before you mix it with the ingredients like the eggs, and the butter and everything. the rest. Because? Because if the yeast is only a little bit of the flour when the cake is made, only a little bit is going to be leavened and it is going to experience the raising effect of the yeast.

I believe that something like this sometimes happens with our churches. We are like the leaven that is limited to a corner and there it is poured into the flour that is the community. But when that happens then we have to sift through that mix and make sure that there is a total blend.

And that means that the church always has to be looking for ways to penetrate the outside world. The church has not been called to be comfortable. It is an invading force, it is a force that is always invading, it is an imperialist force, I would say, because the empire of Christ is being taken everywhere. Its goal is to impact individuals with the gospel message but also institutions, structures, and values. For me the concept of evangelism absolutely and primarily includes impacting men with the word of Jesus.

Hello, God bless you, Pastor Roberto Miranda speaks to you. Thank you for listening to our messages and it gives us great joy to know that this program is being a blessing to your life. I want to leave you with the blessing words of Moses to the people of Israel. Jehovah bless you and keep you. Jehovah make his face shine upon you and have mercy on you. Jehovah lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. It is a privilege for me to be part of your life, I hope you stay tuned to our program: 'An appointment with Christ'. I bless you in the name of Jesus.

Brothers, you know what? When I look at the gospel, I see the word of God and the values of Christ wanting to reach and evangelize all dimensions of the community. When the Lord Jesus Christ gave his great commission call, he said: “Go into all the world” and added by preaching the gospel “and disciple the nations”. Do you know that our Spanish translation speaks of 'Id y (not audible)'. I looked for the original because it seemed to me that the Lord Jesus Christ wanted to say something different.

And I don't speak Greek, nor do I write it. Since I am not in seminary, I never had the opportunity to discern (not audible). There are so many resources today (not audible) and I found there that actually what the original Greek says is 'Go and disciple the nations.' What did the Lord Jesus Christ mean by that? When you disciple someone you impart your values to them, yes or no?

When a painter, a teacher, takes a disciple to teach him to paint, in ancient relationships, in the Middle Ages for example, the disciple came to live with the teacher. The teacher was constantly talking to the disciple, imparting his vision of art, his technique, his concept of colors, his way of painting, etc. And that disciple came out as a prototype, almost like a photocopy of his teacher. With the values and the way of seeing the world as his teacher –although later perhaps he could surpass him with his own talents.

When Christ says: 'Go and disciple the nations', what he is saying is: "Go and impart to the nations and peoples the values that I have taught you. And obey those values.” So the goal of the church, brothers, the great commission, which we often only limit to a service in a park over there, does not meet, I believe the vision that Jesus Christ had. Because what Christ called the church to do was to take the nations, to take the peoples and subject them to the values of the gospel in all dimensions, in all its institutions.

You know what? We evangelists are the only ones who have this standing-on-a-corner mentality and believe that doing effective evangelism is simply treating a person passing by. While I gave this treatment, 200 or 300 people were born in the world. We are already late. The church has to find much more effective, systemic ways of doing evangelism.

You know what? The devil is not as stupid as we are. Satan is a very wise being, with demonic wisdom, but wise nonetheless. And his wisdom consists in impacting systems, institutions, that is why the devil has wanted to take over music and art, the family, journalism, literature, politics, the economy, philosophy.

Because? Because that is the source from which multitudes of people. Satan prefers a thousand times to seize a journalist and embed him with his satanic mentality than if he seizes little children when they are stuck between four walls because with that journalist he reaches 100,000 people and takes them to hell.

So it is important that the church be much wiser. I believe that for this reason the Lord Jesus Christ said in one of his famous expressions: 'the children of this century are more cunning or shrewd in their treatment of their fellow men than the children of light' because corporations and secular human institutions know what is you want to reach the world you go to the sources that feed your mind, your heart, your sensitivity.

The church has to do the same. The church has to understand that its mission is to evangelize not only individuals but also institutions, structures, values; We have to find ways to impact the institution of the family, education in our cities, the media. I fall in love every time I see someone who is educating themselves out there. I was talking to someone a little while ago when I see a Christian saying “I want to get educated, I want to go to university”, I tell them: Amen. Glory to God. Do what you have to do.

Because we need educated people in strategic places to be able to carry out God's work on earth. And look, I have told brothers in my congregation - I am not asking other pastors to do the same - “see if you have to leave a ministry for a while to educate yourself, do it. Because I believe that you are investing in the kingdom of God in that way. Just when you can then come back again, get in and then use your gifts and use your position to move forward."

Because, brothers, we have to be much more open-minded about what it is to be effective. When I see people like Nehemiah in scripture – think of Nehemiah, a layman, a Jew, loving his people who is in a key position as a cupbearer to the king – he has direct access to the king. He sees it continuously, he has the esteem of the king and there in Jerusalem there is a need.

The people are down, they are in trouble, the walls are down, there is misery, there is defeat, there is institutional depression and Nehemías feels in his heart the desire to help renew his people and precisely his strategic position, as a political man and as people of social influence, allows you to take that ideal of blessing the people of God and translate it into an action where you get funds, you get authorization, you get physical resources, you get authority and a number of things that then allow you to return to Jerusalem and do a work of restoration powerful and strategic

And we need men and women with clear spiritual, evangelical and biblical values in positions of authority; teaching in universities, working in hospitals, working in social agencies. Because unfortunately the church, due to its lack of vision and its lack of involvement and its traditionalist and ineffective mentality, we have allowed all those institutions to rob us, brothers.

You know? For example, Harvard University until the 1960s required all its students to go to chapel daily. And many of the Harvard Presidents were pastors. Harvard derives its name from a very pious man who gave a good part of his fortune to create an institution to prepare men -at that time- for the ministry.

However, today it is a source of anti-Christian and anti-spiritual humanism. They didn't steal that university, we let it be stolen by us. Yale, Princeton, all these great universities alike, while we were sleeping there with our little treatises and our cults between four walls, the devil was doing his systematic work robbing us of all these institutions.

And the call of the church is to restore, to redeem everything that the devil has stolen from us: the universities, the arts, our youth, our music. Who says that music is only for the secular world? If God is the creator of all the harmonies of the universe and the church has to be incurring and working in those areas. But we have to change our minds.

Sometimes people don't like to come to these kinds of workshops. Now invite them to go outside where everyone is jumping and with all this, and everyone comes out drunk and with their bows down and happy! Everybody wants to go to that. But invite them to get trained and prepared for ministry to be effective in the community, no one wants to come, because we have a mentality that we have been taught to be traditional and to be conservative and to be uncreative in the way we do ministry.

And we have to instill in our congregations and we ourselves have to acquire a mentality that we are called to possess the land, we are called to invade all the structures of society and that also implies, of course, that our leaders have to be educated people. . Brothers, no, I am not asking you to be a genius, but educate yourself in everything you can: reading, doing biblical theological reflection, inquiring wherever you can. Go to all the workshops you can, be a person who is always in the process of growth and development.

This is also how our churches should be. Our churches should always be experimenting with new things. Right now we are experimenting with everything that has to do with technology. We want to learn to use projectors and computers and all the media. We have just made a proposal to the Federal government, for a grant that they give us is about 300 thousand dollars, which is for a large technology project to help our young people study technology and move forward. And there, stumbling, but we are learning to use our media because we have to.

The church has to be a learning church. Nowadays there is a lot of talk about 'being a learning institution', being an institution that learns. The secular world already know about that. The big and powerful institutions that survive in a changing and dynamic and unpredictable world, with the world that we live in, are institutions that are always evolving, always experimenting with new things.

Look at McDonald's. Mac Donald's started out selling hamburgers. Nowadays you go to MacDonald's and you find: chicken sandwiches, you find Batman figures, everything. Because it is always thinking of the next technique to steal people's money and to evolve. And you see that Disney does like that, buys movie companies and also opens different types of amusement parks, sets up schools for their employees. They are always evolving, they are always creating, they are always inventing, they are always experimenting.

We have to be like this if we want to be powerful churches and ministries. If we want to be impressive leaders, brother, stop sleeping so much, turn off the novel and start asking questions. Stop sleeping so much and get into being a knowledge-hungry person.

And our churches let us seek. The Lord says: "he who seeks will find, he who asks will be given, he who knocks will be opened." Let's go brothers to launch. Someone once said 'I don't want God to me, the only thing I want is for him to put me where he is'. I believe that, I believe that we always have to be putting it in position so that the word of God and the message of God and the vision of God grab us and touch us.

Statistically, where you move the most there is a good chance that God is going to hit you and you are going to find God's calling on your life.

Returning to the case of Nehemiah, you look at Nehemiah, where do you find God's call to Nehemiah? You find him asking questions. If you read the book of Nehemiah, the first thing in the first chapter says that 'some people came from Jerusalem and he asked him: "tell me, how are the people there in Jerusalem? And then they told him: 'That's terrible, boy. The walls are down, people are depressed, psychiatrists are getting rich everywhere. And he then when he heard that said: 'wow! something has to be done and the vision, the call, the mission of God for his life came to him because he was asking questions and was in contact with the information.

We have to get in touch with the information, we have to be constantly restless brothers, we have to be inquiring, we have to be inquiring. In this search process, the Lord will find us. I very much believe what the Word says: "He who sows generously will reap generously"

If you invest, if you sow, if you are continually putting small sticks of dynamite in small places, one of those days, a fire will light one of them and you will catch one. One of my favorite passages and motto for the ministry is found in Ecclesiastes where it says: “cast your bread into the waters, because after many days you will find it”. There he talks about distributing to 7 or 8 because you don't know what's coming to you later.

And that means, brothers, I see that among many other things, we have to be doing, if we want to be people of impact, relevant churches, leaders of impact, we have to always be experimenting, always seeking the life of God, inquiring, researching, reading, reflecting, talking, asking questions. Because all that is being seed that is being thrown into our sensibility and the more seed the Holy Spirit has, the more fruit it can bear. Yes or no?

The more firewood, the bigger the fire. Our part is to provide firewood so that the spirit of God can come down and light a great fire to the glory of God. The firewood is not going to be provided by God, you have to provide it. Elijah had to put up an altar, put up stones, put up wood and prepare everything and then invoke the fire of God: I sowed, Apollo reaped but growth is given by God.

God's part is to give the growth, my part is to sow, and water and yearn and cry out and ask: 'God give me a church, give me a ministry, give me a life that is fruitful and impactful and that reflects your passion for redeem the world Going Forward requires the formation of a missionary mindset.

How can we form churches or ministries? For example, if you are a leader of women or a mystery of men or whatever, whatever you have in your life; Either you are a pastor or you are a pastor. How can we form an externalized, missionary mindset for our ministries? Well, we have to have a clearly articulated vision, as I said, what I am developing here in front of you is to articulate.

Brethren, every day I learn more and more about the importance of vision. This is a concept that has taken me years to develop and understand what it means. Today in all large secular institutions they talk about vision, having vision. Many of us do not have a clear vision of what we want God to do in our lives or in our churches.

I recommend all that time to reflect on what kind of ministry do I want to have? I told them about the pastors I shared with in Wisconsin using an image that comes to us from Steven Cobby in his book “Seven habits of highly effective people”, a key book that I highly recommend. It is in Spanish too.

But Steven Cobby talks about how we have to live and envision life so that if one day we could hear people talking about us in an elegy before our coffin, what would we like them to say about us? What would I like them to say about my ministry or the church that I have pastored? Hey? I would like them to say 'that church was a church that had a profound impact on the community, it was a church that was not there keeping the little coin for itself or buildings for itself but shared it with the churches and with the other institutions. It was a church that had a kingdom mentality and not of itself or for itself only for its own institutional benefit.

It was a church that was in tune with the needs of the community: people saw it as a refuge where they could go and find comfort for their pain, education for their children, vision for life, encouragement, freedom to grow at their own pace with The Lord, tolerance for your moral problems and your struggles. One person could fall and instead of ten trampling on him, he would have ten hands to pick him up.” That's what I envision.

I spend time reflecting, writing, praying and these are holocausts that I raised up to the Lord so that he would make them real. You have to do the same in your life, we have to create vision and we have to write the vision.

Habakkuk, three, I think it is, it will always be the passage par excellence of the vision and it says there "even if the vision is late, don't worry, because it will come. It says "write the vision so that whoever reads it will run through it. Our churches, our ministry, our people need to know what we believe, what we envision, where our passion is.

What kind of church do we want to create? And so we have to write it down and we have to share it with our people. We also have to use instructive, evangelistic and also pro-evangelical sermons. It's not the same thing, I don't have much time to figure all this out.

But also if you lead a women's ministry, take your leaders and sit down with them and talk to them about “Sisters, what do we want to do with our ministry? Where do we want to take it? What is our implicit vision? What are the values we want to govern? Do we just want little ladies there to sit down and drink tea, very elegant and forget that there are single women and young women who are considering abortion and who are not doing anything for their lives?

We have to have those dialogues. One of the things we did many years ago that caused us a bit of trouble was to change the name of our –before it was a ladies' society, that's what it was called in our church- but one day I started to think and talking to some women, I said: I see how little ladies with white gloves and very pretty dresses and a very delicate cup of tea, had a gathering among themselves, while the world falls apart. We decided to change the name to Women's Ministry because it sounded a little more aggressive and more dynamic and more of an entrepreneur.

And that's little things like that, we have to ask ourselves what we want. Names count, everything has meaning, everything has power and we have to have a clear idea of where we want to go and what are the values that should govern our communities. This missionary, aggressive, externalized vision needs to impact the very structures of the congregation.

That is why I really like the cells, because the cells are an extremely aggressive, evangelistic, comprehensive people, where people treat each other, love each other, support and edify and train each other.

So, I want our church to have all these elements: that they promote the vision of mutuality, of activity, of aggressiveness, of evangelism, of impact, of vision for the kingdom. There has to be consistency between one thing and the other. In other words, our structures also have to reflect that call.

Our regular program from Sunday to Sunday, from Wednesday to Wednesday also has to reflect through calls, through oriented ministries. One of the nicest things that has happened lately is the Hospitality Ministry, where for a long time, and lately we have become aware as a church, as the church grows it becomes more and more important that people feel like they belong to a family.

And many times new people come to the churches and they feel lost, like wet chicks. Everyone talking to each other, at the end of the service, greeting each other and they, the poor, there, in a little corner that they don't know if they leave, if they stay a little while longer to see if someone greets them. They leave and on two Sundays you don't see them again in Church.

We realized that we were losing a lot of people that way. We are promoting a more aggressive way to retain visitors, retain new believers and that seems like one of the most revolutionary things, even though it is so simple that it is for a church that wants to be a church that has an impact in the community, reflects the encompassing and aggressive values held by that community. A discipleship and preparation program is needed where people are trained to do evangelism, where people are prepared.

One of the most powerful things to grow our churches is to prepare leaders and for leaders to be breeders of leaders. That idea of the pastor or the orchestra pastor, a lone ranger who leaves the house, drives the bus and goes to look for the people and comes and turns on the lights and directs the devotee and preaches the sermon and then turns off the lights and takes the people to the house and arrive dead tired and depressed is an abomination in the eyes of God.

If we want impressive, powerful churches we have to be decentralizing our churches. We have to be training people, we have to be celebrating the universal priesthood of believers. If not, that powerful and aggressive church that we want is not going to happen because a single person cannot lead even a handful of people. The more effective that church is, the more demands there will be on its ministry and therefore we have to be preparing, otherwise our nets will break when the harvest comes.

We have to have an institutional development mentality. My only desire has been to encourage all of us to develop a new paradigm, a new vision, a new mental model - as they say - of doing ministry. Brothers, our desire, our vision, is not to rejoice here, not to stay on the mountain as the disciples wanted, right? Make three tents and stay there but go down having perceived the glory of God and free the captives of the devil and preach powerful and relevant gospel.

May the Lord bless you.