WHEN WORSHIP SENDS US OUT

"Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”  (Matthew 5:16)

Worship doesn’t end when we leave the sanctuary. In many ways, it begins there.

John R. W. Stott once wrote, “The loving service which God sends His people into the world to render includes both evangelism and social action, for each is in itself an authentic expression of love, and neither needs the other to justify it.”

That truth reminds us that worship is not confined to singing, praying, or listening. Worship becomes real when it shapes the way we live once we walk out the door of the church.

 Worship Sends Us to Speak the Good News

Evangelism is not a task for experts -- it is the natural overflow of a heart that has encountered God. When we leave worship, we carry the story of grace with us. We carry hope. We carry the name of Jesus into conversations, workplaces, neighborhoods, and ordinary moments.

Love speaks. Love shares. Love invites.

Worship Sends Us to Serve with Compassion

Social action is not an optional add‑on to faith -- it is an expression of God’s heart. Jesus healed, fed, lifted, and restored. When we leave worship, we step into a world aching for kindness, justice, and mercy.

Love acts. Love helps. Love restores.

Two Expressions, One Love

Stott reminds us that evangelism and social action are not competing priorities. They are two sides of the same love -- the love that first met us in Christ. One proclaims the gospel of grace; the other demonstrates it. Together they form a life that reflects the God we worship.  

-- SOUND BITES Ministry™

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THE MINISTRY OF JESUS

The ministry of Jesus is grounded in personal practices. Jesus' life is marked by prayer, solitude, worship, reflection, the study of Scripture, conversation, community, serving, engagement with suffering, and generosity.  These personal practices sustained a ministry that opened people to God's grace, transformed human hearts, and changed the circumstances of people in need. 

Jesus modeled going away to quiet places, spending time in the Temple, and listening for God.  Jesus spoke to the woman at the well; the tax collector in the tree; the rich young ruler on the road; the paralyzed man beside the pool; to the lepers and the blind and the widowed and the wealthy; to Mary and Martha and Peter and John.  He held a child in His arms, noticed the woman who touched His robe, healed a soldier's servant, ate with sinners, told stories to Pharisees, and blessed the thief beside Him on the cross.  He intervened to challenge unjust systems that abused vulnerable people, overturning the money changers' tables and dispersing those ready to kill a woman accused of adultery. He connected people to God, opened their hearts and minds to God's kingdom, invited them to follow in His steps, and set them on a path toward God.  Jesus knitted them into community, interlaced their lives with one another by the Holy Spirit, and wove them into the body of Christ, the church. 

By example and story, by lessons and parables, and by inviting them into ministry and sending them out in His name, He taught them to practice and live the ways of God.  Jesus made maturing in faith and growth toward God unexpectedly and irresistibly appealing. 

-- Robert Schnase in “Five Practices of Fruitful Living”

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INVITING OTHERS TO RECEIVE GOD’S GRACE

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God -- not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”  (Ephesians 2:8-9 NRSV)

We lament that many of our churches are no longer growing. Part of it is demographics, since many of our churches are located in rural areas where populations are in decline. Part of it is a lack of vitality in our music, preaching, and small groups. But I’m convinced that a big part of it is that we’ve lost our passion to do whatever it takes to reach those who don’t yet know Christ. That passion drove [John] Wesley and our forbearers to preach on the hilltops, at market crosses, in the cemeteries, and wherever they could get a hearing, in order to share the good news of God’s grace and love for all people.

Wesley preached in city squares, on hills beside coal mines, in jails and fields. He sought out those who were nonreligious and nominally religious, and he invited them to receive God’s grace and salvation through Jesus Christ, free to all.

-- Adam Hamilton in “Revival: Faith as Wesley Lived It”


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INVITING PEOPLE TO FOLLOW JESUS

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.”  (1 Corinthians 15:3-5)

Paul is a prime example of the radical new ways followers of Jesus would spread God’s truth. He had not been among Jesus’ earliest followers, and in fact he had persecuted the first believers. But after miraculously experiencing the presence and resurrection power of Christ, Paul devoted the rest of his life to proclaiming the dual call to love God and serve Him through a life of disciple making: “But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the LORD, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our LORD Jesus Christ.”  (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14)

At great personal cost, Paul traveled throughout the world of his day inviting people to follow Jesus and then encouraging them to go out and invite others to do the same: “So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our LORD or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. He has saved us and called us to a holy life -- not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and grace.”  (2 Timothy 1:8-9a) 

-- Steve & Lois Rabey, General Editors, in “Side by Side”


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