These are exciting but perilous times for our church.  Although, I am writing much of this letter from a personal perspective, I am also writing mostly on behalf of the whole church and our leadership.  We have a tremendous eldership, a great ministry staff, and a wonderful team of leaders at every level and in every part of our church that have and are growing daily in service to God and their work as leaders.  I am honored to be a part of this team.

With that said, I’ll start by saying that from a personal standpoint, I am probably most gifted as a pastor.  Not necessarily a pastor in the bishop/elder sense, but a pastor in the feeder/shepherd sense.  I’ve long had a heart for helping people get on and stay on the right track.  I personally feed and grow on the evidences of God’s work in others’ lives that I get to share in.  I love helping people directly as well as assisting them to find help elsewhere.  I love enabling people to get right with God,  them helping them find freedom from besetting life issues, and just walking along side them in their struggles.

However, my calling in our church is to be an evangelist.  So, I am a pastor living an evangelist’s life.  Now don’t get me wrong, as I do not bemoan that fact, but only to explain it.  Many see an evangelist’s job as simply going out preaching to large crowds and offering a roaring invitation to which scores respond.  I suppose that’s evangelism, but it’s not the general sense exemplified in the New Testament.  Evangelists serve to build and organize churches for the mission.  Evangelists are given visions of kingdom growth and advancement.  Evangelists are given the charge to raise up and mature leaders who can in turn raise up other leaders.  In the organizational sense, elders are pastors and preachers are evangelists.  Certainly both roles function in both ways with tremendous overlap, but nonetheless they are different functions.  Churches today are often not organized most like the early church and in this regard there’s a lack of clarity between the roles of pastor and evangelists.

So personally, I’m an evangelist in that I’ve been called to a mission and a vision.  I’ve been called to call and raise up leaders, enable and empower them in ministry, build ministries around them, help them build ministries, show them how to connect in all parts of the body, and teach them what it means to follow Jesus in this present world as it is.  I’ve been called to challenge them to replicate the Great Commission in their own lives and ministries.

Evangelism is at its cutting edge first sharing the simple message of Christ with others beginning with one’s own life, and then continuing to proclaim that message with one’s words.  It is testifying to and explaining the gospel’s reality in and application to one’s own life.  It is developing a vision for others and instilling that vision in them as children of God, disciples of Jesus.  As they become children of God, evangelism is being used by the Spirit to baptize them into the one body and to be grafted into the community of Christ, the living house of God.  Finally, it is leading them, along with the rest of the community, to repeatedly reenact the gospel of rebirth in others’ lives to the glory of God.  It is building Christian communities that are dedicated to the proclamation of the gospel.  Evangelism is driving Christ back out to the people and to their “neighborhoods”.  Evangelism is escorting Christ into the hearts of others.  Evangelism is replicating the plan of Christ over and over again, individually and collectively, through the generations to the coming of Christ.

My driving internal motivation to evangelize is to pastor though.  Oddly, I’m a little on the shy side when it comes to initial introductions and getting involved in the lives of people I don’t know.  I do it, but I have to make myself do it as it’s not instinctive.  I don’t like to “intrude” in others lives.  But, one cannot shepherd sheep that don’t exist.  One cannot raise up leaders without first making followers.  One also learns quickly that evangelism is a “team sport” and it is most effective, most gratifying, and most complete when done by the body of Christ and not by mavericks and “Lone Rangers”.  I personally adopted two concepts that Paul presented in his own writings to govern my evangelism and pastoring.  In evangelizing, I seek to lead us to “win as many as possible”.  In pastoring, I seek to lead the church to “present everyone perfect in Christ”.  And, these also serve as specifically stated goals and strategies for our church.

In all things ministry, I try never to veer from walking in, and leading others to walk in, “a pure and sincere devotion to Christ”.  I try in whatever I do “to work at it with all my heart as though serving God”, and “whatever [I] do in word or deed to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus”.  I realized early on that I am not called, elected, empowered, and/or commissioned because of any goodness in me, but because of the goodness that is God only.  So, I’m free to just go do what I do without worrying about having to be something I’m not.  I just do my best to let God do his “deal” through me and those I serve and believe it all works out how he wants it to.

The DFW Metro Family of Churches, our actual “corporate” name, bespeaks the vision and calling I was given 12 years ago (and really longer ago than that).  But, I believe it generally reflects the vision our eldership and whole leadership team feels called to.  It represents the vision God laid on our heart as a church in some distinct and clear ways.  “Northeast Church” is legally an “assumed name”, a “doing business as” (DBA) name.  We called ourselves the Family of Churches because of our mission to evangelize through planting churches and ministries.  Our 2020 Vision, given in the year 2000, a challenge really, is to plant 50 churches in 20 years.  Time-wise we’re halfway there and we have four specific churches/ministries (meaning our two FOCUS ministries which function as quasi-churches) so far.  

We’ve explained that these “churches” were not to necessarily be traditional evangelical churches as have been generally contrived.  We’ve come to see our two FOCUS ministries as churches in this regard.  Ours are to be “Jesus” ministries—in-the-trenches-ministries—that are built upon Christ’s principles, of course, but that are to be built as true missions.  They are to be ministries of every kind and to every segment.  They are and will be house churches, campus ministries, and niche ministries, as well as more traditional assemblies.  Some will likely morph from one form to another along the way.  These are not to be defined by bricks and mortar and locations, but they are rather to be human temples—communities that Christ can live and breathe in and manifest his glory through to our cursed world.