This article is from Deacon Magazine. Visit them on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/DeaconMagazine.
It happens. Churches that begin with a clear sense of mission and purpose may find themselves drifting toward isolation and stagnation. The drift sometimes begins in Sunday School. A class can become like an ingrown toenail, painfully curved in on itself. Class members gather for their own comfort and with an appetite for their pet topics, lose any sense of purpose outside of the weekly meeting. Mission fades. Stagnation appears.
Deacons have the opportunity to change the dynamic of declining Sunday School classes and small groups. Pastors often cannot effect change in multiple places at one time, but deacons can. By spreading out into various classes (of adults, youth, and even children!), deacons can set a new tone and inspire people to consider questions of mission. We need to do more than just maintain attendance numbers and settle for the status quo. We need to be gripped by a renewed passion and urgency for joining the mission of God in the world. But this kind of renewal won't take place unless we are willing to ask some tough questions. Church members look to deacons for leadership and service. Deacons can step up and set the pace.
Mission-less hurches and superficial treatments
Why isn't my Sunday School class making an impact outside the church walls? you may think to yourself. Too often, we recognize that our church needs to refocus on mission, but our solution focuses on outward activities and not inward realities. Because the diagnosis is superficial, the treatment is too.
Sometimes we think: The people in our church need more learning. So information becomes the solution. We think Sunday School and small groups are successful if the class members walk out with more information than they had coming in.
But even if information is important (and it is!), surely we want to go deeper than the demons, who know more about Scripture than we do and are devils still.
Other times we think: The people in our church need a pep rally. They need more commands. So application becomes the solution. We amp up the rhetoric, tell people to "do this" and "do that," and we focus on application that will lead to life transformation. But even if everyday life application is important (and it is!), we don't want to become self-absorbed readers skimming the Scriptures in search of practical tidbits, as if we're reading a self-help book. If we go about Bible study this way, we'll never deal with the big picture of Scripture.
Back to the basics
We need a paradigm shift. As deacons, when we notice our Sunday School classes are not engaged in the mission of God, we should look beyond the symptoms to the root cause.
We need to ask tough questions: Why aren't people excited to fulfill the Great Commission? What is causing apathy when it comes to proclaiming the gospel?
These questions push us back into gospel territory. What exactly is the gospel? What does the gospel have to do with life today, not just life after death? What is the gospel's purpose for a Christian once we've been saved? You see, the root cause of our lack of engagement in God's mission is not a missions problem but a gospel problem. We demonstrate by our inaction that we no longer marvel at grace. We are unaffected by the beauty of what God has done for us in Christ. Mission problems point us back toward the gospel-related questions: Why aren't we affected by the gospel? How do we properly understand the good news at the heart of our faith? These gospel questions push us back to the Bible itself and the picture of God presented in the Bible.
All this brings us to a word that tends to scare a lot of people: theology. But put simply, theology is "the study of God." Though some people's eyes glaze over and think "theology" equals "boredom," actually nothing we can study is more exciting.
Just think: we have the privilege of knowing God. Theology is not an exercise in pointless analysis. It's intended to lead to overflowing adoration of the God who made us.
Too often we think of the Bible as just a bit player in a drama that is about our own lives and hobbies. We set the stage, and the Bible plays a part. What if that were reversed? What if the Bible set the stage and we were to play a part? What if we saw the Bible, not as a stale repository of timeless truths, but an epic story of salvation?
Four key concepts
That's why I am excited to be helping create a new Sunday School/small group resource called The Gospel Project for children, youth, and adults. As Christians, we need a good grasp of four components: theology, gospel, mission, and project. By focusing on theology, we ask: What does the Bible say about God? We want to start with God, to catch a glimpse of His magnificence and grace, and then see how knowing God changes our lives.
1. Many Christians are familiar with certain Bible stories, but they are not always sure how the stories fit together into the Bible as a whole. By focusing on the grand narrative of Scripture, we hope this curriculum will help us connect the dots and think as Christians formed by the great Story that tells the truth about our world.
2. Theology is what drives us deeper into the gospel. Too many times, we assume that the gospel is just the basics of the Christian life, but intense, deep discipleship takes place when we get into the theological precision of interpreting biblical doctrines.
Not so. The gospel is the story that gives richness and profundity to all our study of the Bible. John 3:16 is simple enough for a child to believe, and yet we can linger over these words for a lifetime and never exhaust all the truth contained there.
3. Our hope is that by finding our place in the biblical story of our world, we will be empowered in fulfilling the Great Commission. There is no gospel centeredness that does not lead to mission, for the gospel reveals the heart of our missionary God and His desire to save people of every tribe, tongue, and nation.
4. Finally, the word project is a good reminder that we have not yet been fully formed into the image of Christ. The project is not a curriculum we work through. We are the project. The church is God's gospel project. God uses the gospel in order to shape us until we look more and more like His Son.
Gathering to go
Too many small groups and Sunday School classes view weekly meetings in terms of consumerist expectations. We come; we sit; we receive teaching; we leave. Even groups that prize participation can fall prey to the same temptation. We come; we sit; we talk; we leave.
Our hope is that the classes who use The Gospel Project will be shaped by the character of our missionary God seen most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ. Weekly gatherings are not the goal of the mission; they are the means by which we connect with one another and learn God's Word so that we are equipped to love God and neighbor while spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.
The goal is not to fill our heads with theological truth but to fuel our hearts with passion to join God on His mission to bring people to Himself. Keeping a focus on how the gospel leads us to mission is a crucial aspect of how we apply the Bible to our lives.
Conclusion
The Gospel Project. If it sounds basic, well, it is. It's supposed to be. The apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that the gospel is the message by which we are being saved, right now, in the present. This means that the gospel isn't just for our past. It is meant to shape our present. So why not return to this message and explore its implications every time we open the Bible? Kids need to know Bible stories and how they relate to the big Story of salvation. Students need to know what they believe and why, and how everything connects back to the supremacy of Christ. Adults need to be reminded of the gospel that continues to change us inside out.
Deacons and pastors, church leaders and servants, all Christians everywhere, need a vision. As we learn the great story of God's world, we bask in the good news of what He has done, and this gospel transforms our hearts and moves our feet toward a lost world with the message of salvation.