Effective: to successfully produce or accomplish a desired function or end result.
3 Beliefs we have about the Church:
- The Church is the hope of the world!
- There is nothing like the local church, when the local church is working right!
- The eternal destinies of the people in our community hangs in the balance so we better get it right!
Ephesians 4:11-12 NLT
Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:27 NLT
All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.
The ministry of the church
should look like the ministry of Christ!
He was more concerned about connecting with the lost than stroking the egos of the religious.
Mark 2:15-17 NLT
Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?” When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”
He wasn’t afraid of using unrefined, imperfect people.
Mark 3:13-15 NIV
Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons.
He joyfully utilized the power of the crowd.
Mark 4:1 NIV
Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge.
He taught so the average person could understand.
Mark 4:33-34 NLT
Jesus used many similar stories and illustrations to teach the people as much as they could understand. In fact, in his public ministry he never taught without using parables