Mission Reflections

The mission statement of our church is; "To be an authentic New Testament Church, To Reach the unchurched, and to develop fully mature disciples of Jesus Christ." In order to flesh this mission statement out we as a church in groups and individually are being asked to consider some questions about what this means. I'm sure that I'll be doing this in other places but I'm going to use this space for the next few posts to reflect personally upon the questions. If they get a bit long feel free not to read them, if you have places that you would like to interact feel free to leave comments.

The first question is: Are the goals of the mission statement listed in order of priority, or are all equally important?
My short answer would be yes.
The follow up question then would be why do I think this?
The authentic New Testament Church seems obvious to me as the place to start. Without it the other two lose their context. There are many reasons and ways to reach people who are not in church and they could have nothing to do with the God of creation and the invitation of Jesus to accept the reality of being made in the image of God through his teaching, love, and sacrifice. So if we don't put the New Testament first the cart goes in front of the horse.
Now the next two are where the conflict arises. Is the church of the New Testament here for the building up of believers first or is it for the building up of the disciples (in New Testament language, "the saints").
Jesus command as he left the disciples and ascended into heaven was, "Go make disciples..." (Matthew 28:19) There seems to be a clear indication that the expectation is for people who believe in Jesus to replicate that belief in others and not to be content until all people come to a living faith and relationship with Jesus. (Romans 16:26) The reality is that faith ends if those outside the faith are not brought into a relationship with Jesus.
The last statement then is to develop fully mature disciples. This is the goal then of the church in not simply telling people that they should believe and trust in Jesus, but that faith leads them to a different way of living. Become mature disciples is what should happen following being reached. I think this is often the hardest part because while we talk a lot about what the marks of discipleship are, we rarely ask one another, "why don't you look more like that?" The use of the believers spiritual gifts then as Paul says in Ephesians 4:12-13 is to build up the body of Christ both numerically and spiritually. It is the logical outcome of people becoming believers. A child is designed by God to grow and become an adult when everything is working correctly. When a child remains childlike everyone recognizes that there is a problem. In the church when a believer doesn't become a disciple what do we do? (ok I think that is a reflection for another post)

So to return to the short answer I would say that yes the order is correct in the mission statement and to change that order moves outside of the design that God has for God's church.