Becoming More Outward Focused

April 2008

During the last week, I have been reminded about the importance of “first things.” Most of us, if pressed to give an answer, would say that the Great Commission is a primary command for the church. However, it is amazing how many different things on which the church can focus and center its life other than the Great Commission.

Most of the things on which churches focus are good things. We could and should do good deeds in our community. We could and should provide fellowship activities within our churches. We could have and should do pastoral care in our churches. However, we could find ourselves doing many good things and neglecting the best.

This past week I had an opportunity to hear Paul Borden, the author “Hit the Bullseye” and “Direct Hit.” Borden contends that too many churches have become self-serving. In these books he is challenging us to cause our churches to become more outward in their orientation. He also believes that most churches will have to do radical rethinking of who they are in order to accomplish this.

I would recommend these two books to pastors and church leaders. There is no doubt that we need to become more outward focused in our thinking and ministry. All you need to do is look at our baptismal statistics for the last few years and you will see that we are not reaching as many people as we could. You can also look at our Sunday School attendance figures and our worship attendance figures. If it were not for new church plants during the past 20 years, we would be in severe decline.

I will warn you however that Borden will definitely challenge your thinking about your church. His proposals call for a different kind of organizational structure than the one to which we are accustomed. Your initial reaction may be to reject him out of hand. That was my first reaction as well. Let me challenge you to dig a little deeper. I think that you’ll find the underlying principles are very sound. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

Borden is very correct in a number of areas. We have too many churches that are inwardly focused and content to service the members and not reach out to the community. We have had too many churches that have lost their passion for the Great Commission. It will require radical transformation for many churches to turn around. If many of our churches don’t change, ultimately they will die.

We also have a personal responsibility to Christ and His calling in our lives to make sure that we are making disciples. We can never be satisfied with the status quo. Every one of us, especially those of us who are leaders, must make sure that we do not fall into the ruts of complacency. We must challenge the churches that we serve to go through the changes that are necessary to make our churches Great Commission churches.

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