We had our ‘Quarterly Member’s Meeting’ last month where we looked back at the quarter past and looked into the quarter ahead. January’s meeting typically has more details for us to visit including our annual outlook/vision casting. For 2025, we broke down all that we do into three buckets: Outreach, Fellowship, and Devotion. I’ll keep this one short with a brief explanation of each bucket, my vision for that bucket, and then my main, yet concise (hopefully), point.
Outreach
Outreach is the way in which we engage our town, neighbors, or anyone outside of our church. Outreach is typically seen as VBS, Easter egg hunts, block parties, youth camps, etc. The vision for this year focuses on church-organized outreach and member-organized outreach.
Church-organized outreach will be those events that our staff puts together to partner with the City of Medina and other organizations to come alongside of what is already going on. These types of outreach should be seen as secondary, in my opinion, in the sense that they are general reach and really only give opportunity for us for us to make our presence known and to serve others in simple ways.
Member-organized outreach is outreach led by and organized by members. My hope is that this becomes the main form of outreach. I believe that there are two subsections of this category.
Everyday Means. The ways that we reach out to people every single day should be viewed at as outreach. When Gospel Centrality takes root in our lives, we begin to see our newfound life in Christ as an opportunity to turn everyday conversations into outreach, evangelism, discipleship moments.
Examples of this would be inviting your neighbors to grab dinner with you and taking the opportunity not just to fellowship, but be intentional to ask them about their faith or lack there of. Another example of this would be to host a game night with some of the folks from your neighborhood, workplace, or families from your child’s school. During that game night you seek to be hospitable, loving, caring, and kind as Christ has been all of that and more to us. We also seek to be intentional with getting to know the person, or people, so that you can share the hope of the Gospel.
Bigger Events. What used to be viewed as “outreach”. At some point in Church history, probably more recently than not, the expectation of all church events began to fall on pastors and staff of churches. What I believe this has caused is the wrong understanding of the role of pastors, deacons, and even staff of a church, while also creating comfortable, lackadaisical followers of Jesus. What if believers had an idea and did it?!
Examples would be block parties, VBS, Egg Hunts, local scavenger hunts, ongoing book club at a local coffee shop to meet others with the same interests who may be unchurched or not saved, etc. What if you had an idea, shared it with the staff or pastors, and they HELPED you plan and accomplish your idea. How exhilarating?! How fulfilling to see God lay something on your heart and your see it through? How encouraging for other brothers and sisters to have helped to do it?
The main point here is that it’s time to put our boots on and get to the work we’ve been called to. When we consider how the Gospel has changed our life, it will change our view on outreach. When we consider the love Christ has shown to us, we will desire to show that same love to others.
Fellowship
Fellowship is sort of like in-reach, in that instead of reaching out to the community of Medina, it is us spending time in with our family. Fellowship is like a Friday evening in the 90s where you and your family just wanted to spend time together, go nowhere, but rather order a Pizza Hut pizza (or three), get a Bockbuster movie, and enjoy the evening in. As much as we should commit ourselves to outreach, we should also commit ourselves to fellowshipping with our brothers and sisters.
The biggest obstacle here is going to be time management. How do we effectively juggle our time? One thing that my wife, Aubrey, has always been big on is inviting people to participate in what we are already doing. If we are going to Chipotle for dinner, Aubrey will often tell me to ask this family or that family if they’d like to go and get some food with us. We are already going. If they come, great. If not, another time then. But this requires zero extra time out of our life. We do the same with park dates, coffee dates, etc. We have to be wise with our time, so it’s best to get creative and think outside of the box. Stop adding more, and start adding in.
On top of that, our church has several events that allow men and women to fellowship through the year. Shoutout to Bill and Kouri Doerge for leading several men’s and women’s events throughout the year to help assist in keeping our entire body connected.
Devotion
Devotion is time spent in the word. I probably could’ve, maybe should have, started with this item, but I’ve placed it at the end because it almost acts as a support. Instead of starting with this as the precedent, I want a visual of this piece upholding the others. If we don’t believe the Scriptures to with powerful, without error, sufficient, and worthy of our time, then everything else is a waste. Every time we turn to the Bible, we should view it through the lens of the Gospel.
When we better understand the Holy Word of God, then we better apply it to our lives. We are reminded of the importance of personal obedience while also confronted by our negligence in the name of “busyness”. We often neglect personal devotion, fellowship, and outreach because we have bought into the false mindset that it is the job of the leaders in the church to do outreach, fellowship, and devotion. When this happens, we become more and more disgruntled when our church isn’t growing, doing youth group, running bible studies, etc. Instead of stepping up to lead, our hearts will step out to follow. At the root of this, I believe the Scriptures call followers of Jesus to lead.
We ought to be familiar with the Word and hungry for the Word. Saturate your life in the Word and study it with others. We don’t need church run programs to study the Bible (though they are fun and helpful). We need the Bible, a heart for Jesus, and a desire for him. On top of that, we’ve been given our brothers and sisters to study it with, teach it to, and be lifted up by.
Conclusion
Remember the Gospel everyday. Preach it to yourself. The more we remind ourselves of the Gospel, the more we remind ourselves of our desperate need for Jesus everyday. Not only that, but we are reminded of his everlasting love, ever flowing mercy, never ending grace, and life-changing power through his Spirit.