The Right Balance? (2): Word Centred and World Reaching
- Rev Norman Cameron

We are looking in this series at what it means to be a balanced church and balanced Christians. Last week we saw that we are individuals, loved by Jesus Christ and called by him. Each one of us is unique and God knows us by name and we are special in his eyes. But the other side to this is that we are called to serve Christ within the body corporate. In our increasingly individualistic and selfish culture we need to see that there are no lone-ranger Christians, or if there are any they are very unhealthy. The Christian who is growing in understanding of themselves is growing in their understanding of God and what it is to live and love in the context of Christian community. Church is individual yet corporate.

The second balance which I want to focus on this morning is that we as a church are called to be word centred and world reaching; or to put it another way we are to be inwardly developing and outwardly reaching. We are to grow inwards and downwards as Christians as we become nurtured as disciples, but as this happens the true disciple will find that we also begin to look outwardly more as well. This is a very important balance to have in our church, but it is a difficult tightrope to walk. Many churches opt for maintenance over mission – it is something that we can slip into very easily. Younger churches have more of an emphasis upon mission, but as they go on longer they build programmes and structures and life gets complicated and before you know it mission has been replaced by management, then maintenance, and then the danger is that with a loss of vitality and energy and outreach it turns into a monument.

To avoid this danger we need to keep this balance before us, word centred and world reaching. Jesus of course as we have said had the balance perfectly. He was a teacher and missioner, a discipler and a healer. In the verses we read in John’s gospel John has recorded a prayer of Jesus for his disciples. I want to focus on two verses which hold before us a biblical balance that we need to strive after –“Sanctify them by the truth: your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” Jn.17:17-18

1. SANCTIFIED BY TRUTH

The word sanctify means set apart, made holy, purified. All these words apply. As the church we are God’s called out people, God’s set apart people. The greek word for church is ekklesia which literally means an assembly of called out ones. We are called out of the world in the sense that we are called out of the world system and the world’s way of thinking to follow a new master and Lord. Jesus is our king and his kingdom is within our hearts.

But although we are called out of the world we are called to continue to live in it, in it but not of it. This is a difficult balance ands the one that we are trying to explore today. The first side of this balance is to be word centred. As a gospel church we need to be focused on God’s word, God’s truth. This is vital because the Bible says that our minds, our thinking is distorted by sin. When we come into this world we are not thinking clearly for we, and the whole world order, is tainted by sin and by satan. The way the world thinks is skewed, especially when it comes to who God is and what he expects from us. The only way to counter this is by truth, specifically God’s truth which is revealed to us in the Bible.

John Stott in his book The Living Church says that a living church is a learning church. In Acts 2:42 where we have a description of the early church it says “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching”. They were hungry for truth, they were hungry for guidance from God as to how to live as Christians. A good sign of spiritual health is a hunger for teaching, a hunger for bible reading and bible study.

When a person is unwell they do not eat, they lose their appetite. It is a sign that all is not well. So it is spiritually. Have you a desire to eat God’s word, have you a desire to study, have you a desire for teaching. Or is it the case that you have no desire for the Bible, no interest in reading it, a sermon on Sunday is just about enough for you to cope with. If this is the case I am sorry to break bad news to you – you are sick. You maybe did not know that but you are not well. You need to sort this out, get daily bible readings, get into a Laser group, get some good Christian books and start reading and getting an appetite.

Jesus prayed for the disciples – “sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth”. If we are to think in a right way in a wrong world we need to pour in the truth, eat the truth, meditate on the truth, sing the truth. God’s word is milk and meat to us, vitamins and medicine. With the appointment of Gareth we are hoping to develop discipleship, Bible study on an individual and corporate basis, widen the number of people involved in small groups and in ministry. We will be making plans for a Bible academy or bible school for God changes lives through his word. We will be intentionally discipling people in the word and if you are not word centred we will be seeking to encourage you to be so. We need to be word saturated.

Moses exhorted the people in Deuteronomy 4:5 “See I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me so that you may follow them in the land you are entering. Observe them carefully for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people”.

As Moses exhorted the people to listen to God’s word, as Jesus exhorted the disciples to be sanctified by his words of truth so we need to be in the word and we need to pass on the word to our children. Deut.4:9-10 “Be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” We need a curriculum for Christlikeness that is taught and caught in the home as well as in our S School.

We also need as Chester & Timmis remind us in the book Total Church, to realise that teaching of the bible is not solely, indeed even primarily pulpit based. Preaching is important but it is far from the whole story. They say “In our experience most character formation and discipleship takes place through informal and ad hoc conversations….the way to teach is in the routine of life…we should be teaching one another the Bible as we are out walking, driving in the car or washing the dishes.” Discipling takes place in ordinary life. They say “we need Christian communities who saturate ordinary life with the gospel”.

So we need to be word centred if we are to be healthy Christians. This drives us into the scriptures and together as Christians to learn from each other and from God. But this is only half the story for, as we see, Jesus encourages us not just to look inward but also to face outwards. We are called out of the world to be better equipped to go back into it.

2. WORLD REACHING

In Jn.17:18 Jesus prays “As you have sent me into the world I have sent them into the world.” Heaven for Jesus was safe and comfortable but he had to leave it for a rescue mission. Church for us is safe and comfortable but we are called to reach the world. Jesus left us a model of incarnation, the word becoming flesh and dwelling in a sinful world to rescue a sinful world.

So we have this tension between maintenance and mission, between come to us and going out to people, between running programmes and developing relationships with unbelievers. Jesus left us standing orders in Matthew 28 – “Go and make disciples…”. The emphasis is on the word go. There is an outgoing and outreaching aspect to this that we dare not ignore.

Chester and Timmis says that “most gospel ministry involves ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality”. It means that when we think of mission we do not think let’s run a mission, or let’s have an evangelistic course. That may happen and that may be part of what it is to be a missionary minded congregation but primarily it is about individual believers living their ordinary lives in a winsome way, in a salt and light way, in a looking out for opportunities to invite people to church sort of way. It is not the big spectacular thing, it’s the small forming of relationships and relating to people in a christlike way at work, at home, at leisure. It is being Christ to people, about Jesus being in your shoes in your circumstances and in your situation.

Total Church is good on this. Again it says “We want to spend more time in evangelism, but because this can happen only at the expense of something else it never happens. Rethinking evangelism as relationship rather than events radically changes this. Evangelism is not an activity to be squeezed into our busy schedules. It becomes our intention that we carry with us throughout the day.” It is lifestyle evangelism really. It is about being natural and letting God work though you in your natural environment.

John Stott talks about our double identity – we are called out of the world but then called back into it again to witness and serve. It is a kind of “holy worldliness” that we are aiming for.

There are two dangers that we must be careful to avoid. One danger is dualism where we see our church life here and our life out there as separate. Many people, and many Christians divide life into spiritual and secular. A bible study is spiritual, playing football is secular. With God all of life is his, the only thing that is secular is sin. When we offer our lives to God then all we do, if it is done with an attitude of glorifying God, is a spiritual act. Also there are no holy buildings only holy people. This place is holy because we are here. Our bodies are temples where the Spirit dwells – where we are God’s Spirit is. So as we leave this building God goes with us. To think dualistically is wrong.

The other danger is to be so programme centred that it stifles creativity, outreach and the forming of relationships. John Stott says that a church that becomes too obsessed with internal programmes can end up with a heretical structure. Stott says “The commonest fault is for the church to be structured for holiness rather than reaching the world and being a missionary church…some zealous churches organize an overfull programme of church based activities. Something is arranged for every night of the week. Monday night committees, Tuesday night fellowship groups, Wednesday night the Bible Study and so on…such churches give the impression that their main goal is to keep their members out of mischief. Certainly they have neither time nor opportunity to get into mischief since they are busily engaged in the church every singly night of the week. As someone said our structure can be an end in itself not a means of saving the world.”

In a large church we run many programmes for many people. But we must be careful to guard people’s time to build relationships and be involved in the community. We need a balance of sanctification and incarnation, of being in the word and being in the world, of worship and teaching and going in service and witness.

Thus as we look at some new ventures and programmes coming to Kirk Session we must ask is there a balance here of maturing and outreach, of developing people in their understanding of God and resourcing them to reach others and invite others to that group or programme. Is it totally inward or is there an outreach aspect. We must do this to be a mission minded and not just a maintenance church. And mission of course is local and global. It is about Ballymena but again we need to be less insular and have a world mission interest. Are we praying for missioners overseas and locally, are we giving to local and overseas mission? The world is shrinking and through the web and e mail we can make more of an impact on the world. Other nations are coming to us _ I never thought I would see the day I heard Polish and Romanian and Lithuanian language on the streets of Ballymena. Here is a mission field. Have we representation from these nations in our church. If not perhaps we have not the balance right.

As we do hold this balance before us hopefully we communicate the philosophy and the vision that we do not come to church, we are the church; church is not about running programmes it is about living life, church is not an event it is an identity. We come together on the look out for God, we go on the look out for people.

Being a gospel church is being word centred and world reaching, may God help us to be such for his glory.