Main Idea: Achieving our maximum potential depends on intense prayer for effective outreach.

I recently finished Tony Dungy’s book Quiet Strength. Tony Dungy is the coach of the 2007 Super Bowl Champions, Indianapolis Colts. I have been a fan of Tony Dungy’s since he coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His Christian witness is clear both off and on the field. He has lived his life with one evident purpose. He said, "My purpose in life is simply to glorify God."(p.301) He has done that throughout his career as a player and a coach. He has done that with the ultimate achievement of winning a Super Bowl and with the unspeakable sorrow at the loss of his son, Jamie.

Dungy is known for helping teams achieve their maximum potential. He brought the Bucs from the bottom to be consistent winners. He has done the same with Peyton Manning and the Colts. He has a very simple philosophy of coaching to achieve success: "Do what we do." "Whatever it takes," "No excuses, no explanations." Win or lose, those three principles have guided him to achieve the maximum potential of both the teams and players he has coached.

The question I want to ask you this morning as the family of First Baptist Church is, "Are we achieving our maximum potential?" My second question is: If we are not achieving our maximum potential, then why not?" I know I have mentioned money recently, both the challenges and the blessings. I make no apology that as a member of FBC I believe you should be giving as an expression of your devotion to Christ and his church a minimum of 10% of your resources. But are our finances, whether good or bad, keeping us from achieving our maximum potential? We have a beautiful new LIFE Center anchoring the future of our church but is that brick and mortar structure the key to achieving our maximum potential as a church? There could be many things that I could suggest that could either hinder or help us achieve maximum potential but are those the real keys to our effectiveness? Does our success rest on our budget and our buildings? The answer is no. Those things are vital but they are not the reason we are maximizing our potential in God’s eyes.

What is our maximum potential anyway? Is it the numbers we can count in worship, Sunday school, or in baptisms? Is it the amount of money we have in the bank? Is it the money that we can show that we are giving to missions or the ministries we have or the programs we offer? Every one of those things is a reflection of achieving maximum potential. But just like JR preached last week, our deeds are no assurance of our being pleasing to Jesus Christ. So what is our maximum potential as a church? I believe it is this: We achieve our maximum potential as a church when we are fulfilling the Great Commission in our context.

What does that mean? Just so we all know what we mean by "The Great Commission," let me read it to you once again: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20.) Those statements are Jesus’ orders for us to do three things: We are commissioned by Jesus to connect people with Christ, create followers for Christ and communicate the truth of Christ to all kinds of people. That is the Great Commission.

If that is the Great Commission, where are we to do that? I believe it is God’s desire that we do that, fulfill that or complete that, in the context or community in which God has placed our church or any church. This has been a conviction of mine for almost 25 years. I believe that we achieve our maximum potential as a church when we decide that we will be "missionary" in our community. That means that we will be Christ’s presence in our community, that our church will reflect our community, and that we intentionally connect with our community in order to engage those without Christ in our community. It means that we see everything beyond the corners of Main and Matthews, Main and Jefferson, Jefferson and Madison and Madison and Matthews as the starting points from which we will obey Jesus’ words to "Go and make disciples of all nations…." We achieve maximum potential when we obey that command!

So how well are we achieving our maximum potential by fulfilling the Great Commission in our context? The honest truth is that we are not achieving our maximum potential. This church has always excelled in its ministries. The very soul of this church is a servant heart where we will do whatever it takes to serve those with needs of all kinds. We excel in fulfilling Jesus’ words, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these you did it for me" (Matt. 25:40). Someone posed the question, "If your church wasn’t there, would your community know the difference?" My answer, thankfully, is "yes!"

I will say again what I have said before over and over. We cannot allow the hard work of people who are serving in our ministries and missions to excuse the rest of us from the call of God to make disciples of others in our community. Our city continues to grow with more houses, subdivisions, jobs, businesses and people. We are located on a street that on one end on weeknights and weekends is filled with people living life. We are the only Baptist church from east to Caraway and west to Gee Street. We have members who live within the by-pass and outside the by-pass. Our community continues to grow yet, for all we have done as a church in the last fifteen years, we basically stay the same in attendance. We average between 750 and 770 in Sunday School and do a great job of reaching our children. I know all of that is hard to hear and hard to say but if you want to know what keeps me awake at night it is asking myself the question, "Bruce, are you and are you leading FBC to achieve your maximum potential?"

So what do we do to achieve our maximum potential? Well, there are two things that Paul mentions that I believe are the essentials for fulfilling the Great Commission in our context. They are simple, uncomplicated statements. The two essential factors for our achieving our maximum potential are praying with intensity in order to reach out effectively. I believe you will find those two elements tied together repeatedly throughout the New Testament. Prayer and evangelism are so closely linked that you can’t have one without the other and achieve maximum potential.

How do we achieve maximum potential? We do it, first of all, by praying with intensity. (Col. 4:2) How do we pray with intensity? Is it the volume of my voice or the time I count on my watch? Paul explains that intense prayer is first of all determined prayer. He says, "Devote yourselves to prayer…." The word "devote" means to be constant, diligent and determined. It describes a gritty tenacity to not give up. This kind of prayer is to be experienced by everyone in the church and each individual believer. Prayer that achieves maximum potential will be prayer that seeks to lay hold of God and refuses to let go.

The next thing Paul says is that praying with intensity is informed prayer. He says, "…with an alert mind…." The idea that Paul is expressing is that their praying should be with a mind that is aware and sensitive to the Spirit of God and the cultural climate in which they were living. When we pray with an "alert mind" we are praying in such a way that our prayer is informed by God’s Spirit and our understanding of the culture around us. It is taking the time to ask God how he wants us to achieve our maximum potential but then informing our mind and heart with the real needs and challenges of people’s lives.

Praying with intensity is prayer that is determined, informed but it is also expectant. Paul says, "…and a thankful heart." It is praying with the knowledge that our praying matters to God and that he has promised in his word to answer our prayers. So that even if we may not see the specific results, we can pray thanking him for what he will do. Thankful prayer expects God to act and answer but it also acknowledges the great work of salvation that Christ has done. It is prayer that isn’t blind to the obstacles and the difficulties but it also recognizes that God is able to work.

Could it be that one of the reasons our church is not achieving our maximum potential is because we are not praying with intensity? Do we gather as a community of believers to pray for our fulfilling the Great Commission? Have we determined to keep that focus in front of us? Are we letting our mind be informed about the needs in our community both spiritually and physically? Are we expecting God to act and answer our prayers? This has nothing to do with our money, our buildings, our ministries, our location or anything else we might pose as an obstacle to our achieving our maximum potential. Instead, it is a simple question of are we willing to pray with intensity? Fulfilling the Great Commission in our context doesn’t start with a plan but with prayer!

After encouraging the Colossians to pray with intensity, Paul gives them the particular direction that their prayer should take. He is asking them to pray for him to be effective in his ministry. If we are going to achieve maximum potential it will begin with intense prayer that will result in effective outreach. (Col. 4:3-4) Listen again to what Paul says in verse 3: "Don't forget to pray for us, too, that God will give us many opportunities to preach about his secret plan—that Christ is also for you Gentiles." He asks them to pray that he will not fail to seize the opportunities that God offers him. Other translations use the words "may open to us a door." It is the idea that what Paul wanted was to be able to see and seize the opportunities that God was placing before him. It was opportunities that God opened, not that Paul could think up.

In order for us to fulfill the Great Commission in our context we need to pray with intensity for us to see and seize the opportunities that God opens. That begins with a mind informed by God’s Spirit and aware of our culture but then the spiritual sensitivity to say, "That is God opening up a door of opportunity to us! We need to act and not let this moment slip by us!" My friends, I believe that there are opportunities all around us that we just don’t see. It is not that God has closed the door but that we don’t see the opportunity! May God help us to pray so intensely that we would see and seize the opportunities that he has waiting for us! Do you not think that since this is his desire that he would provide a way for us to fulfill that desire?

Then Paul says that the reason he wants to seize God’s opportunities is to "preach…that Christ is also for you Gentiles." Paul was a man who set no limits on the grace of God. The Gentiles or non-Jews were disregarded by the Jews and seen as outcasts from God’s favor. Yet Paul’s specific mission and purpose was to preach that God included them in his plan for eternity. In Paul’s preaching he set no limits on the grace of God. All he wanted was for God to keep opening the doors of opportunity to tell them how much God loved them.

Bill Hybels has a term for God’s passion for people who are far from God. He calls God’s grace "radical inclusiveness." It is a phrase explaining that in order to save people from their sins Jesus died on the cross for each and every kind of sin and each and every kind of sinner. What we must do in order to achieve our maximum potential is to share Christ without setting limits on God’s grace. What a blessing it is to see our ministries and missions reaching people with a radical inclusiveness. That there is no one too desperate who is not within the radical inclusiveness of God. Yet let me ask you, do you see the people at work, school, the club, the game, the neighborhood and the restaurant as within the limits of God’s grace? If we are going to achieve our maximum potential, it means that we see them and refuse to set limits on God’s grace!

Paul wants nothing more than to reach out with the gospel with all the effectiveness available. He wants them to pray that he will seize God’s opportunities, he will set no limits on God’s grace but he desires, as well, to simply and clearly tell God’s story. (Col. 4:4) Two times in this passage Paul mentions the verbal, audible sharing of the gospel. He said for them to pray for opportunities to "preach" and then asks that he would be enabled to "proclaim" that story "clearly." The word "proclaim" is the word for "reveal." It has the idea of God giving creative ways to expose or reveal the gospel to more people. The word "clearly" carries the idea of it being spoken without any mental or physical hindrance to its acceptance or opportunity for sharing.

Fulfilling the Great Commission in our context comes down to our simply and clearly telling God’s story of his love for us as seen in Jesus’ death on the cross. It implies our ability to connect with all kinds of people in all kinds of ways in order to simply and clearly tell the story of Jesus’ love for them. Think about this: Paul was in prison in Rome when he wrote this letter but all he thinks about was finding a new way to share the story of Jesus. He couldn’t stop dreaming of ways that others could hear but he wanted that telling to be done clearly so they could understand. We need that same passion if we are going to achieve maximum potential. We must pray that God would show us how to connect with the mind and hearts of people so that the story is being told simply and clearly.

Our church’s maximum potential is our fulfilling the Great Commission in our context. In order to achieve that, we need to pray intensely in order to reach out effectively. So what do we do with this message? There are two things we are offering for you after next week’s message. One is we are setting aside one Tuesday night in October and November for prayer here in the sanctuary to pray for our church and our outreach to the community. We don’t know what God wants to do but we are going to start there. The second thing is that after next week’s message you will receive a packet of cards that you can use to invite someone to church. This is very simple. You just give the card to someone God has impressed you to speak to and you just invite them to church. If these do not work for you then that is fine and you just pray and ask God to show you how to reach out effectively.

I told you earlier that the question I ask myself is: "Am I leading FBC to achieve its maximum potential?" That question stirs and disturbs my soul. It makes you wonder that if that is on my mind what is on the heart of God. In a book on personal evangelism by Bill Hybels he describes what Jesus thinks about: "You know, I dream that someday, places of worship will be filled with people who lay awake at night concerned about the human beings my Father created. Who care about broken bodies and broken souls and hopeless futures and hell-bound eternities. I dream of the day when people who gather in my name are so filled with the love of the Father that they go out and spread his love and extend healthy hands to others—praying, coaching, and encouraging them to walk in fullness of life. I dream of worship centers filled with radically loving, outwardly focused, Christ-sharing people. That’s what I dream about." (Bill Hybells, Just Walk Across the Room, p. 74) Jesus dreams of our church achieving our maximum potential by fulfilling the Great Commission in our context. Is that your dream for FBC? Then fulfilling that dream starts with intense prayer for effective outreach.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org