Sermon - "Purpose"
Series - Building Blocks of Effective Churches
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I’ll never forget the first time I had to fire somebody. I was just out of college and was the Director of the Boys & Girls Club. I had an assistant director who, for the most part, was an efficient and effective employee. I don’t recall him ever being late. He was great with the kids. He somehow managed to balance the role of disciplinarian and friend – a difficult task for many. He knew the rules, followed the rules, and enforced the rules…until one day.
This particular club was close to the city pool. It was possible to walk to the pool during summer day camp, which we frequently did. As the assistant director, he was responsible for those trips. He would often take the Club’s van to the pool, in the event of a discipline problem or other emergency. The kids would walk with support staff and the he would follow in the van. The day he lost his job, it began raining at the pool. Instead of waiting it out, or shuttling the kids back in the van, he put ALL the kids in the van – 28 kids in a 15 passenger van! Kids were sitting in each other’s laps, in the floor, in between the two front seats. When he pulled in, I saw what he had done. I immediately took him in the office, explained the problem, and asked him to clock out for the last time.
I simply couldn’t understand how somebody who seemed like a good guy and a good employee could forget everything about how we operated. I couldn’t understand why he would jeopardize his job by jeopardizing the kids unnecessarily. For a brief moment, he forgot the Club’s mission of providing a positive and safe place for kids and it cost him dearly. In the high risk job of taking care of other people’s kids, there is no room for forgetting the mission. As soon as you forget the mission, a kid gets hurt, lost, or worse. We couldn’t afford to tolerate lapses in judgment.
As we consider effectiveness in the local church, I can’t help but think that a critical building block of effectiveness is a clear understanding of the mission to which we have been called. We understand that this is a team effort, but the team has to understand why we are doing what we are doing.
In Mark 10, we learn that two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, had gotten distracted from their mission. They had walked with Jesus, talked with Jesus, heard Jesus preach. Of all the people who should have understood Jesus’ mission for them, it should have been the twelve men who followed him every step of the way. But these two, if only for a minute, missed the mission. The consequences they faced for forgetting the mission was the ire of the other disciples.
I fear that there may be people who worship with us every week, they hear sermons and bible studies, they come to Sunday school, but for whatever reason, they continue to miss the mission of disciple-making. In a task as important as the Great Commission, how can we afford to take our eyes off the mission? If we don’t all understand the mission, how will we ever be effective at accomplishing it? And even if we understand the mission, what calamity awaits us if we take our eyes off the mission for but a moment?
Ultimately, we are all in this as a team, and as a team, we all need to understand the goal, and how we measure progress. We haven’t got the time to forget the mission. Every time we do, we become less and less effective.
In Christ,
Pastor Brian
