“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” – Matthew 28:19
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation…” – Mark 16:15
“…you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” – Acts 1:8
“They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” – Acts 2:42
“Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” – Hebrews 10:25
I start this devo with five verses. Before you read the rest of this article, I would ask you to spend time dwelling on the verses above. They represent a major part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
And if you spend time dwelling on them long enough, you will come to see that they seem to encourage two different behaviours. The first behaviour is to GO. Go into the world. Make disciples. Preach the gospel. Be witnesses. But GO.
The second behaviour is to GATHER. Be devoted to praying together, eating together, sharing God’s Word together, and sharing life together. Stimulate each other to good deeds by “assembling” together frequently.
What is important for you to know as a follower of Jesus is that both these behaviours work together. They are not separate activities. The purpose for gathering is to stimulate each other to good deeds. Those good deeds include going into the lost world and sharing the love of Christ. That sharing will lead to larger gatherings, which lead to more stimulation which lead to more going out into the lost world. These activities are meant to feed each other.
But sometimes, we get the activities wrong. We focus on turning the gathering into a performance. We spend a lot of our time transforming our singing into musical performances. Pastors strive to develop the most engaging sermons for the purpose of enticing more people into the gathering and to keep the ones who are already there.
Another way we get the activities wrong is we just stop going. We don’t go into the streets where people are hurting. We avoid the widows and orphans of our community. We replace the word GO with the word COME.
I don’t want you to think that making a church service more appealing or engaging is bad. I also don’t want you to think that we shouldn’t invite people to church. This observation on my part relates to what we are most preoccupied with. And it isn’t going and gathering.
Imagine if I cooked a bunch of food and failed to salt it. You might find that food bland and uninteresting. We are called by Jesus to be “salt of the earth.” Now that metaphor has many meanings. Salt does make food taste better. Salt acts as a preservative. Whatever application of salt you wish to make, we can all agree that if salt is removed in this context, nothing good will follow.
So, failing to GO into the world, failing to reach out and extend the ministry of Jesus to others, is a sad situation. Failing to gather regularly with each other and growing our gatherings is equally sad.
The focus of our attention as followers of Christ needs to remain on going out and gathering together. These things are vital if we wish to fulfill the mandate that Jesus gave.
Let’s spend more time reaching out. Let’s spend more time bringing others into our space.