When it comes to working out what your church will do, you first have to figure out what your people are able to do. There is no point coming up with an amazing plan for outreach if it centres around certain key skills your people don’t have or time commitments they aren’t in any position to commit to. You ultimate have to ask what can our people do, what are they interested in, what will they be able to do. Everything else, whilst lovely to think about, is ultimately not workable in practice.

When it comes to church life, there are lots of questions that rear their head again and again. Among them is this: what should we do? Obviously, lying behind that question is a series of others. What, exactly, is the mission of the church? What has God specifically called his people to do? Has he set any boundaries for how they ought to do it? There are many others besides.
But let’s just assume some things for a moment. Let’s assume we all agree that the mission of the church is to make disciples. That is, telling people about Jesus and seeking to grow them to maturity in Christ. Let’s assume for a moment that we all agree the gospel is the key to making disciples. That is, nobody will become a disciple of Jesus without understand the gospel, the good news of who he is and what he came to do. Let’s assume for the moment that we all agree that making disciples, then, involves telling those who don’t know about Jesus about him and telling those who do know Jesus the things about him that will lead to their growth in maturity.
With all those assumptions in place, let’s now ask our question: what should the church do? Or, more specifically, what should my church do? Are there particular things that my church should be doing? How do we even figure out what exactly we ought to do to make and grow disciples?
I think there are two groups of people you need to think about when answering this question. First, who has God given to this particular church? Who are its members? What are their particular skills and interests? What are they able to do? What are they specifically unable to do? We have to look at the gifts, resources and abilities of the people the Lord has given to us and ask what is possible for these particular people to do.
Second, we have to think about who the Lord has placed around us. What demographics are in our community? What are the needs? Are there places these particular people congregate? If not, what ways can we create spaces where that might happen? Are there places they go that I could go with them? Are there places I can go with them where it would be easier, more natural and most appropriate to share the gospel? Are there places it would be inappropriate for me to try and share them gospel with them?
These are not the only questions we might want to ask of these two groups of people. But these are the two groups we ought to be asking these sorts of questions of. 1. Who has the Lord given to us in the church (and what can they do)? 2. Who has the Lord placed around us (and what can we do with them)?
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We learn a great deal about ourselves when we rub up against people who think, live, work and act differently to us. We often learn, not just how annoying other people are, but why they might find us difficult and annoying. Sometimes they might well have a point and often we have to find a way to work through it. If we can’t, we are going to struggle in the church because Jesus tells us, ultimately, we must.

In any church, you will rub against people you don’t get on so well with. There are always people whose personalities we gel with better than others. I’m not talking about people who sin against you (though that will happen), I just mean people will naturally gravitate to certain other people and may find others rub them up the wrong way.
The world’s answer to such situations is to cut such people out. If you don’t click with someone, then forget about them. If you don’t like them so much, just avoid them. If you feel someone just isn’t your cup of tea, you don’t have to have anything to do with them. Just keep out their way and leave them to get on with being themselves, somewhere far far away from you.
But in the church we cannot do that. We shouldn’t do that. We have to love our brothers and sisters. How can we say we love God but hate our brother or sister? John’s answer is that we can’t. But even if we don’t hate them, we just don’t get on with them, we can’t easily do any of the one another things Jesus commands us to do from a distance.
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As believers, our final authority lies with scripture. The Bible itself is full of examples of people, saying to other people, that the Bible says their behaviour is troubling or needs correcting. That is the bread and butter of church discipline and, according to James, a matter of life and death (cf. James 5:20). 

The concept of abuse is floating around a lot at the moment. It is absolutely right that we recognise that there are pastors who abuse their sheep and, similarly, congregations who abuse their pastors. But it also bears saying that not everything that is called abuse is any such thing. Here are some things some people call abusive but are not.
When Someone in Authority Disagrees with You
This is just what it is. Disagreement is not abuse. Someone disagreeing with you who also happens to have some authority over you is also not abuse. You may go to your pastor and ask for something to happen that he does not think should happen. That is not abuse.
The fact is, people will disagree with each other. It may be over minor stuff, it may be over major stuff. But disagreement is not abuse. Disagreement is just disagreement. And disagreement will inevitably have consequences inasmuch as you presumably have to do something in line with whatever it is you are disagreeing about (either doing a thing or specifically not doing a thing). But to disagree and act in line with what is decided is not abusive.
Someone in Authority Not Doing What You Want
Similarly, just because somebody with authority or power does not do what you want does not make them abusive. I have written various book manuscripts. When it comes to the writer/publisher relationship, I am very much without power in that I cannot make a publisher take my book. All the power lies with the publisher. Hold onto your hats for this shocker, but not every manuscript I have written has been accepted by publishers when I sent them in. Some of them had the audacity to say they didn’t want my book (imagine that! The impertinence!) There is nothing abusive about them choosing to do what they are within their rights to do. Just because they didn’t do what I wanted does not mean they have abused me.
Similarly, you may want to do something in the church that your pastor, vicar or elders determine is not appropriate (for any number of reasons). That, similarly, is not abuse. There are any number of reasons why your suggestion might not be adopted. But just because they say ‘no’ to your idea does not mean they are abusively trying to control you. They are just not doing something that you would prefer they do. That is not abuse.

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Prayers that are not offered in and through Christ are like undelivered letters. They remain unread, unopened, and most significantly, unheeded. Anyone who has not put their faith in Jesus and approached God through him does not have access to him. Your prayers are undelivered, landing in God’s infinite dead-letter office. The Bible is very clear on this point. ‘There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim 2:5). 

We have been going through Hebrews recently in church. The key headline from Sunday’s sermon was that, in Christ, we can have real confidence before the judgement seat of God. We can access God confidently through the Lord Jesus.
One of the side points I made in that sermon – in passing and it was not in my notes – was that unbelievers have no right of access. Specifically, I noted that God does not hear the prayers of unbelievers. That is to say, if you do not trust in Jesus, God does not hear your prayers.
Of course, by that, I don’t mean God cannot hear the words coming out of people’s mouths or the thoughts in their heads. Of course he knows and hears those things. He knows and hears everything. So, in the sense that he knows when unbelievers are praying and knows exactly why they are praying and what they want, God hears their prayers in that sense.
But what I mean is that God does not grant them a hearing.
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As Evangelicals, we like to think we’re all about telling people about Jesus. But I wonder if many people would view Evangelicals as very “active” and not much more. The truth is, we are often very busy. But the real question is, do we actually tell people about the Lord Jesus?

Churches can be very busy places. My Sunday, these days, are pretty busy. Then we have a bunch of stuff on in the week. English Classes, Food Club, Dialogue Evening, Homeless drop-in, Lego club. There’s stuff happening most days at the church building. On top of all that, we are trying to encourage people to be involved in stuff in the community too as well as carving out the time to hang out together and do softer kinds of discipleship.
As you think about your own church, I am sure you can think of various things you are doing too. Some things that aim to build up believers, other things that aim to reach unbelievers. But as you think of all those things, it bears asking a question: do you actually tell people about Jesus? It might sound like a stupid question. Surely, if we’re anything, we’re all about telling people about Jesus, aren’t we? Certainly, that’s what we like to think about ourselves.
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What we need as a church is people who are free to hang out with other believers. We need people who are able to speak about Jesus in the ordinary everyday bits of life. We need people whose hands are not full of lots of formal ministry but whose timetables are free and flexible to simply read the Bible and chat with people about Jesus. Who are free to read some books with people and then meet up to chew them over. It sounds like a non-job, but it is really quite important.

In areas like mine, there are not a right lot of Christians about. We are in the middle of a majority Muslim area of town and in a town that is not replete with Christians at any rate. Which means what we are most interested in here is not attracting Christians who aren’t here, but reaching the lost with the gospel.
Knowing that we are seeking to reach the lost, we must also think how we will reach them. It may come as a surprise to some, but unbelievers don’t tend to just wander into churches on Sunday. If we’re going to reach the lost in our community, we’re going to have to either go to them or create the kind of spaces they will want to come into.
One of the ways we do that is by meeting needs. So, we provide things like English Classes and a Food Club as a place for people to come in. There is a need and we are happy to meet it in order to put ourselves in contact with unbelievers. We similarly create other spaces, like our Dialogue Evening, where we can meet with local Muslims and discuss the differences of our faith. Again, these are means of creating the kind of spaces – that do not typically exist in our town – where Christians and Muslims, believer and unbeliever, can spend time together.
It similarly means that we have to think carefully about how we will disciple people in the faith. Most of our members do not come from well taught, brilliant Christian backgrounds.
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We must ask what we’re trying to achieve before we can figure out the best way to achieve it. Unless we know why we are doing this thing we can’t possibly figure out how best to do it. 

It seems like an obvious thing to say, but let me say it anyway. What you are aiming to do will necessarily affect how you do it. That is to say, what you do is necessarily driven by what you are aiming to do. What you do should be driven by why you are doing it.
The problem we often have in our churches is that we get this backwards. Often, what we are doing is not driven in any way by why we might be doing it. In fact, why we are doing it is often little more than because it is what we do.
So, it is not uncommon to go into churches and find them doing all sorts of things. Sometimes some pretty peculiar things. When we ask why we are doing them and what are we trying to achieve by them, nobody is entirely sure. We are doing it because it is what has always been done. We may be doing it because someone once thought it was a good idea but the reasoning behind the idea have been lost in the mists of time. We are doing it because there was a good reason at the time we instituted it but that reason no longer exists but we kind of carried on doing it anyway.
Interestingly, some of these same sorts of impulses come up when somebody deigns to stop something that has always been done – or that has at least been done for ages – from being done anymore. It doesn’t matter what the thing is, or whether anybody has any reason for why it is still being done, we have always done this is the view that often prevails. I don’t have to justify the existence of the bizarre or irrelevant thing, you have to justify why you are determined to no longer do it. Apparently, I cannot fathom what its purpose is and you are doing very little to help me out with that does not compute.
Which brings me back to my original point. Why we are doing something ought to drive what we actually do. We ought to have a reason why we are doing everything that we do in church. If we aren’t entirely sure of the reason, it may be a prime candidate for something we are no longer going to do.
In order to have conversations that are helpful about this, we need to return to first principles. The ultimate reason for us to do anything as a church is because Jesus tells us that is what he wants his church to do. So, if Jesus says it, we ought to do (or not do) it. So, we have to think about what Jesus says his church exists to do. Why are we there and what does he want us to be doing? If we can’t answer that question first, we have no business moving onto thinking about how we might go about doing any of the things he wants us to do.
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Hearing people singing the songs heartily, praying earnestly, sharing testimony of how the Lord has been at work in them, these will all encourage other believers. Nothing encourages your elders more than seeing you grow in maturity and Christ-likeness. This is the ultimate fruit of engaging with the Word, engaging with the church, engaging with the commands of Christ. 

1 Thessalonians 5:11 exhorts us, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, to ‘encourage one another and build each other up’. But what are the key ways to encourage and build up other believers in the church? Here, in no particular order, are a few ways.
Show Up
It’s hard to encourage people when you are never with them. In fact, if you are continually away from the meetings of the gathered body, far from encouraging and building up the body, you are actively discouraging it. It is so disappointing when the preacher stands up to share God’s Word and people aren’t there because they couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed or they had better things to do than worship the living God and meet with his people. These things are a major discouragement. One of the key ways you can build up and encourage the church is by showing up to things.
Engage Heartily
Showing up is absolutely vital, but engaging in what is going on when you are there is similarly encouraging. Of course, some of your engagement will depend on your particular church setup and liturgy. But in our church, we have participation from the congregation in the prayers, the songs and our time of testimony.
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It is both one book with one author and one story and yet a collection of writings, from multiple authors, from different places, using different genres yet consistently agreeing with one another. It is both one book and many. It both has one author and many. It is both of these things that speak to its consistency and act as strong evidence it is, indeed, divine revelation.

One of the interesting things about the Bible is that it is both a single book and a collection of books. It has both a single author and multiple authors. It is both one story and yet multiple genres, stories and writings.
At any given moment, there is usually a push to treat it more clearly as one or the other. So, lots of people have made effort to ensure that we preach the Bible as one story – which it is – but then can so emphasise the oneness of the story and overarching author that it flattens the differences between the multiple authors. Others, by contrast, so emphasise the different authors and genres that they almost (or, sometimes, totally) ignore the fact that there is one storyline to about which the whole thing points in every part.
There are often different occasions to emphasise one thing or another. So, in preaching, I tend to emphasise the oneness of the story for believers reading the scriptures in light of the Christ to whom they point. Whether reading Old or New Testament narrative, poetry, prophecy or history the emphasis falls hard on the primary author (God) and the key to the storyline (Jesus Christ) and the reason for his coming and the occasion of any promises (the gospel). Whilst we are, of course, looking at the details of this particular book, we are concerned about them so far as the overarching storyline goes too.
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Indeed, when it comes to analysing everything to death, Paul is quite clear in that section: ‘eat everything that is sold in the meat market, without raising questions for the sake of conscience, since the earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it.’ His answer seems to actively shy away from analysing everything to death and instead towards just getting on with your life. Paul is saying it is okay to just enjoy stuff and not suck the joy out of life by analysing everything to death.

Christians are pretty expert at sucking the joy out of everything. You name it, we can find problems with it. Even if we can’t nail a specific issue to make you feel guilty for enjoying something, you can bet we’ll insist on a full introspective analysis of motives before you can even consider enjoying the thing. Then, if you do determine to enjoy it and go on to do so, you better make sure you don’t enjoy it too much!
We seem to often have a problem with joy. Even Lloyd-Jones’ book – Joy Unspeakable – features a picture of him looking miserable as sin on the back of it. In every way, that book title is a misnomer. How can you write a book about something which is apparently unspeakable? How can you then speak about that unspeakable joy next to a picture of you with a face like a wet weekend? That isn’t to knock the book at all; just to illustrate the fact we can have something of a problem with joy. If it is unspeakable, we are often certain it’s unshowable and, let’s be honest, potentially unreal.
A lot of this instinct comes out at Christmas. The festive period is fine, so long as we don’t enjoy it too much. Or, enjoying it is fine, but we have to analyse it to death before we can confidently just enjoy it. Anything we may think, say or do have to be pored over before we can legitimately enjoy anything. That isn’t to say we should never be introspective, aware of potential sin, and keen to honour the Lord in what we say, think or do, it’s just I don’t think analysing everything to death in the pursuit of that leads to the evident joy Jesus came to bring. Indeed, it is something of a joy-killer.
Someone will inevitably say, ‘whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.’ That surely warrants some introspection and consideration about ‘whatever you do’. Doesn’t that warrant asking whether this actually brings glory to God? Whilst I think that question is valid, it seems to miss the wider context into which Paul made that comment. Paul’s concern seems to be about not giving or taking offence. You have no need to judge another before the Lord and try your best not to do what is going to cause offence. The solution he comes to is to neither rule out or in the eating of meat offered to idols (the question under consideration). He essentially says, ‘whatever you do’ i.e. eat or don’t eat, do it with a clean conscience and try not to give or take offence over it.
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