What is our motivation?

Starting new churches is the best way to reach new people for Jesus. That is a fact. (Study the missionary work of the Apostle Paul, and you'll quickly see that his method was to start new churches in urban centers throughout the Roman Empire. It was a successful method, to say the least.) The reason we are starting a new church in the old Munger Place building is because we want to reach new people for Jesus, and thereby be faithful to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20).

But, why do we want to reach new people for Jesus? What is our motivation? Let's start with what isn't our motivation. First, we are not motivated by a desire to recruit people to our side or our team. In other words, our desire to reach people for Jesus and help them become his disciples is not about increasing our numbers and thereby becoming a powerful group. If that were our motivation, it would mean that people were merely the means we need to reach our end, and we reject that premise. People matter for their own sakes, and not for what they can do for us. Second, we are not motivated by a desire to show the Lord how many people we're reaching, in order to gain his favor. We are not going to be "collecting" names as credit in our heavenly bank accounts. That's not the gospel. The gospel is that we already have the Lord's favor: we don't earn it.

So, why do we want to reach people for Jesus? Because we believe that Jesus offers abundant, eternal life, and that he offers us that kind of life now! All around us are people who are looking for abundant life in unsatisfactory ways. We want to point them to Jesus and say, If you drink from regular water, you'll be thirsty again, but if you drink from living water, you'll never be thirsty again (see John 4).

We want to reach people for Jesus because we believe that Jesus offers something of supreme importance that we cannot have without him: abundant, eternal life! One way that Jesus gives us abundant life is that he heals us from sin. Sin is a major problem in my life, and I suspect (no offense) that it is a problem in yours as well. If sin is like sickness, then the death and resurrection of Jesus is like a life-saving vaccine, and the resources of the church (the Bible, corporate worship, fasting, prayer, etc.) are like medicines the Holy Spirit uses to help us convalesce.

May the Lord continue to heal us from the canceled power of sin, may we come to have abundant, eternal life, and may he use Munger to do the same for others!