"Engage"
As we wrapped up a 3-week series at church about Why We Exist, we focused this past week on engaging our community and our world. Engage is a powerful word. Here are some definitions I found on the web.
- to participate in or be involved in.
- to establish a meaningful contact or connection with
- to attract or involve someone’s attention or interest.
Isn’t this what we want to do with the world we live in? To attract their interest and to establish a meaningful connection with them so that we can share the greatest message in the world. But to do that we must engage them, we must go to their world to take the church to them. Yes our church should be attractional, but we should definitely be missional as well. We cannot put all our focus and effort on what happens on Sunday morning. Thom Ranier quoted a statistic in a recent Outreach magazine that 95% of the average church’s ministries are only for it’s members. Have we forgotten the command to GO? I used this video to emphasize our need to not become complacent with our mission. I think it is a powerful analogy of what happens in many churches. When you engage culture, it gets messy, it gets uncomfortable, and it gets dangerous. But we cannot let that fear keep us from doing what God has called us to do.
We also announced that we are establishing a new fund for Cornerstone. It’s not a building fund, because we’re not focused on a “building” But we deeply care about engaging the community we live in. We have decided to establish an “Engage Fund” that people can donate to to help in developing our land in engaging our community. We have some awesome plans on how we can reach out and impact our community, but it will take the serious and sacrificial support of the church. I can’t wait!