Before Mark came to the the church I serve, he had spent practically his entire adult life involved in church programs and serving on church committees. “You name it, and I did it,” Mark said. “I was on finance teams and personnel teams. I worked on capital building campaigns and sat in long-term planning sessions. Every week my schedule was filled with church activity.”
After becoming a part of our faith family, Mark started hearing people talk about making disciples. That’s when he realized that, despite all the good things he had done in the church, he could not name one person outside his family whom he had led to Christ and who was now walking with Christ and leading others to Christ. Mark said to me, “David, I have spent my life doing all the stuff in the church that I thought I was supposed to do. But I’m realizing that I have missed the most important thing: making disciples.”
At his workplace and in our community, Mark is now intentionally leading people to Christ and teaching them to follow him. The story of Mark’s life as a Christian should frighten us. The last thing you and I want to do is waste our lives on religious activity that is devoid of spiritual productivity—being active in the church but not advancing the kingdom of God. We don’t want to come to the end of our days on earth only to realize that we have had little impact on more people going to heaven. Yet if we are not careful, we will spend our lives doing good things in the church while we ultimately miss out on the great purpose for which we were created. (David Platt, Radical Together)
Being deeply involved in loving our neighbours shouldn't be that radical to us if we read the Bible, but in our modern society it actually is. Many people are like Mark in the story above, doing all kinds of activity in the church, and being honored for it but ultimately missing the point of following Jesus.
Who are you getting radical together with in your own neighbourhood?
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