Before we begin, can you answer this question? What is our congregation’s mission statement? Do you know it? Go ahead. Take some time to see if you can repeat it. I’ll wait.  

How did you do? If you couldn’t say it, I’m not going to reveal it right now because you would have sneaked a peek. You’ll find it later in the article, but here’s the point. Do you know why we exist as a congregation? Do you know why you exist as a creation of God?

We’ve likely all asked that question. "Why do I exist? Why did God create me?" The simple answer is that our primary purpose in life is to glorify God. 

³¹ So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 

-       1 Corinthians 10:31 (NIV)

The Bible contains a lot of verses that tell us to glorify God or speak of God's glory. How do we glorify God? By loving and obeying Him. We could fill page after page with Scripture telling us how to love and obey God, but that's not necessary for our purpose now. When we love and obey God, we glorify Him, plus, we glorify Him when we give special worship to God in adoration, whether on our knees, standing in praise, or whatever method brings your heart to bend toward God. 

So, God created us for His pleasure and for us to glorify Him. 

¹¹ “You are worthy, our Lord and God,

to receive glory and honor and power,

for you created all things,

and by your will they were created

and have their being."

-       Revelation 4:11 (NIV)

Obviously, for the same reason you and I exist: to glorify God, but there's a little more to it. Let's observe Jesus since He's the Head of the Church. The focus of His work on earth was to do the will of His Father in Heaven. 

³⁸ For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 

-       John 6:38 (NIV)

The next logical question is, “How did Jesus accomplish His Father’s will?” He accomplished His Father’s will by serving people.  

Okay, in what manner did He serve people? Let’s list a few ways.

1.    He turned water into wine.

2.    He healed the blind, lame, the dumb, the demon-possessed, and you can name more ways He healed.

3.    He gave worth to the outcasts: lepers, the poor, the oppressed, and those of the wrong nationality or origin of birth.

When Jesus met people, He often served them in some way. He satisfied a need. 

He taught in the synagogues. He taught His closest followers. He taught individuals like Nicodemus, and He taught the multitudes. He taught the ignorant, and He taught the educated religious leaders of the priesthood.  

Think of the number of times His closest followers bungled His teaching. We might want to call them failures, yet Jesus did not give up on them. He nurtured them along as a mother nurtures her little children. Jesus did not reprimand His followers as we would likely have done. Instead, Jesus brought them along as though they were His highly loved children.  

A disciple is a person whose mannerisms look like the teacher's. Despite the often-blatant failures of His followers, Jesus taught them, nurtured them, and made them into people whose characteristics resembled Him. Thus, they became His disciples who looked like Jesus in their actions and behavior.  

Jesus existed to do His Father’s will by serving, teaching, nurturing, and developing disciples. That is how Jesus accomplished the will of God. As God's Son, He fulfilled the desires of His Father. He carried His mission out to the minutest detail.

Jesus is the head of the Church, and we are His body: His hands, feet, mouth, ears, and more. At the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus told us to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20), and He told His disciples to start in Jerusalem, right where they were at that time (Acts 1:8).

So, when we take the command of Jesus to go and make disciples and begin right where we are, what does that look like today? It's pretty simple, and we start exactly where we are by doing what Jesus told us to do. As the body of Christ, we exist to reach people by serving, teaching, nurturing, and developing disciples. That’s how Jesus accomplished His Father’s will. He brought people to believe in His Father in Heaven so they would glorify God. He began by serving them. And that’s our job too. We begin by serving people.

Did you catch the reason we exist in the above teaching? We exist to reach people by serving, teaching, nurturing, and developing disciples. That’s our mission statement here at RCC, and it’s how Jesus brought people to His Father. Our mission statement parallels how Jesus drew so many people to follow Him, and it begins by serving others.

We bring people to Jesus the same way He brought them in. We are to serve people.  We serve them in the name of Jesus. We must become servant minded. We must constantly have servanthood on our minds. We must eat, sleep, drink, work, and play with servanthood at the forefront of our minds. We must constantly look for ways we can help people. 

If you are not servant-minded, something must change. While we cannot opt for a brain transplant, we can opt for something much better. The Apostle Paul tells us we can be transformed and that transformation is well within our reach.

¹ Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.  ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

-       Romans 12:1-2 (NIV)

We exist to reach people by serving, teaching, nurturing, and developing disciples.

Let’s begin by becoming servant-minded and serving others.

Love you & God Bless,

Kenny