God’s church is called to serve all people in three very critical ways: (1) to give them biblical truth, (2) to represent Christ accurately for them and (3) to specifically serve and empower those who join the local congregations by modeling the path to spiritual life in God. If they do these three things, then they are truly serving the nations. Let us then look at some of the more obvious things to be done in each of these three general mandates:
I. Speak Biblical Truth:
1. Church leaders must make their sermons, teachings, and literature not only geared to personal and church-related life, but to their cultural-social lives as well. As “salt and light,” the church is called to model social justice as well as serve as the nation’s priest, prophet, and teacher. We are the “pillar and ground of truth,” all truth. Scripture addresses virtually all aspects of culture and government.
2. Well-informed church leaders and congregants should seek to speak to and influence the entire community through social, business, and media organizations. TheTransforum is designed to aid in that process.
II. Represent Christ Accurately:
1. Christ gave us the parable of, “the Good Samaritan.” This parable should become a strategic community expression for every local congregation.
2. Christ modeled love for all people and so should we. He broke through the prejudice barriers of His day by the way He related to sinners, women, and non-Jewish people. His “harder side” was reserved for hypocrisy, indifference, and religious arrogance. While standing firm on the biblical mandates of Christ and His standards of faith and morality, we believers must model, “speaking the truth in love.”
III. Serve and Empower the People Spiritually:
1. Crisis and pressure either breakdown people’s spirituality or takes it to a new level.
a. Church leaders must seize this opportunity to facilitate the latter effect in their people.
2. Church leaders can envision and encourage their people in the following ways:
a. By helping them to build their personal and family prayer lives.
3. Prayer that relates to their personal and family “gardens.”
a. Prayer related to their church ministry focus.
b. Prayer related to their chosen public policy issues focus.
c. Prayer related to their selective community service projects.
4. Encourage the people to:
a. Reduce and eliminate personal, family, business & church debt.
b. Inventory their skill-sets for a possible church-barter economy.
c. Prepare food and water storage (food shortages, etc., re: fear).
d. Prepare family disaster plans and protection.
e. Pray in capital reserves.
f. Pray for opportunities for “divine encounters” by recognizing when someone wants
to talk about social issues that we as Christians have been studying. Again, this is
where TheTransforum.com can help prepare you for these opportunities.
5. In the Church:
a. Invest in the miraculous; we’ll need it!
b. Invest in the prophetic; we’ll need that, too!
c. Build leaders both for service inside and outside the church.
d. Build trainers. In other words, people who can truly help build other disciples.
e. Build youth leaders to help empower the next generation.
f. Pray in capital reserves.
g. Increase your capacities and communication systems for both your members and community.
6. Help prepare your surrounding community through:
a. Neighborhood preparation systems and programs:
i. “Know your neighbors” programs.
ii. Inventory skill-sets within your neighborhood.
iii. Disaster preparedness plans for your neighborhood.
iv. Train our people for positions of leadership in the community. This is critical.
v. For positions of general service.
vi. For positions of key leadership in the City, as “Elders in the Gates.”
All three of these major church responsibilities will both re-vitalize the church and make it substantially more relevant as a community servant. God is glorified when the church accurately represents Him to all people. These pro-active strategies will serve people, create opportunities for evangelism and discipleship, and produce trained citizens for your nation. This is TheTransforum; let’s engage.
Related Resources:
For more information on the author, Dennis Peacocke, go to: http://www.gostrategic.org/
