You don’t have a mandate from the Lord to run a church for one sort of person – a youth church, a Nigerian church, a middle-class church, an elderly church. A church should have a mix of whatever is in the community around it – that is a healthy church. A church should mirror the demographics of their community. Tree of Life is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural church because that’s what London is like. Every church should reflect their community.
I have a real concern about black churches and white churches, we should we worshipping together if we live in the same towns and communities – firstly it prepares us for Heaven, and secondly, it gives us insight that we haven’t seen before. People from other backgrounds and cultures see things we haven’t seen before and gives us perspectives we haven’t had before. Why? Because we take seriously our responsiblity to love everyone!
It’s so important we don’t judge a book by its cover, it’s so important that we do not pre-reject God’s grace for someone. We have to believe God can transform anyone. The moment we are building a church for a certain group of people, we have become respecters of persons, and stopped being like God.
The pastor is called to equip the church, the church is called to shine as light and bring all men and women to the knowledge of the truth. Our job is not to go and have cups of tea with people, run a bake sale, play bingo – as a church our purpose is to share the truth with people. A healthy church will always be doing things, but let’s make sure we are doing the right things – let’s make sure we are doing kingdom things and letting people encounter God and His grace., Your church is a city on a hill, a light to the world, salt – and your job as a pastor is welcome everyone, but then let them know the mission – we are not here by accident, we are here on purpose – and the purpose is to get the gospel to people.
If a church exists, it exists for a reason – find out why it exists and let the people know that mission. For Tree of Life, our churches exist:
- to make disciples built only on the complete work of Christ
- to create a church full of the Word, full of the Spirit, full of the nations and full of love
- to plant churches that plant churches
All are welcome, but at some point you have encourage your people to switch from being the mission field to being the mission – and if you are actively against the mission then you can go, we have something so important to do.
It takes wisdom to know how to impart that vision, that dream, to build that culture, to transition people from mission field to mission. It’s a core part of being a pastor – pray for wisdom on how to do it more effectively.
Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers 