Dear First Pres,
Wow, what a meaningful church weekend it was! Big thanks to all of you who helped to make it happen.
If you came out to Trunk or Treat you may have noticed that there were some young men serving us from the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity at Fresno State University. Their presence on Sunday is some of the fruit that has come from the work of our FPC Go Team focused on Fresno State’s Greek Life students. A Go Team is a group of FPCers who feel called to pursue a particular group of people in the midst of real community with shared commitment for the purpose of growing disciples. (You can learn more about Go Teams HERE). For years, this Go Team has been reaching out to Greek Life students. And, by God’s grace, they have developed a particularly wonderful relationship with the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity. No, it hasn’t yet led to a large group of Delta Sig brothers sitting in our pews on Sunday morning, but the Go Team continues to love and serve this fraternity while regularly inviting them into Christ’s life and our church. Our prayer is that Sunday’s experience of serving in our midst helped to break down any barriers getting in the way of these guys moving toward Jesus.
Several years ago we had a healthy church expert with us for a weekend. He introduced to us a framework for living out the call to be a Great Commission church. A Great Commission church is a church through which people are coming to faith in Jesus, growing in faith in Jesus, and leading others to faith in Jesus. The framework was simple. It included four primary activities for the church: outreach, evangelism, discipleship and worship. And the premise was simple too: when a congregation prayerfully and lovingly and consistently engages these activities, the Spirit will make them fruitful for God’s Kingdom according to His will. In other words, God is in charge of the results, but these are the activities that the church engages to participate in what God is doing.
Perhaps, of these four activities, outreach is the most misunderstood. Outreach, in this framework, is the intentional work of building sustainable and mutual relationships with people who aren’t following Jesus. When we encourage you to invite others to our services and events, you can, of course, invite the strangers you encounter throughout your day. But you’re much more likely to have success inviting people who have experienced you – people who know you and are known by you.
Our Greek Life Go Team is intentionally doing outreach to Fresno State students involved in the fraternities and sororities. But I think a good question for each of us to ponder today is this: who am I intentionally pursuing? Or, what does outreach, as defined, look like for me?
Personally, I’ve been doing some soul searching on this one. For the last many years, my outreach space has been connected with my kids’ activities. But now that my youngest is a senior in high school, that window of outreach seems to be closing. And, since so much of my life is spent within the congregation, I’m not sure where the next natural place for outreach is going to be. So, the questions above are live questions for me, too.
Something to remember: God is building His Church. Every day, all across our city, the Holy Spirit is drawing people to faith in Christ Jesus. The invitation for us is to step into the flow of that work by cooperating with the Spirit through outreach, evangelism, discipleship and worship. I can’t think of anything more exciting than that. So, may the Lord help me to know what outreach is to look like in my life, and may the Lord be stirring each of our hearts with His gracious invitation to join His redemptive activity.
Blessings,
Jeremy
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