What Does My Church’s Health Have to Do with Reaching the Unreached?

With over 3 billion people in the world who are classified as unreached, should churches really be that concerned with their own spiritual health? Sure, we want people to be committed members, to hear the preaching of God’s Word, and to give regularly, but should we really obsess over internal matters while thousands of people groups have little or no access to the gospel? Aren’t we wasting valuable time and energy?

We should always be on guard against the kind of inward focus that blinds us to the global scope of God’s saving purposes. However, it doesn’t follow from this that we should take God’s design for the church lightly. The One who commanded us to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) also sent out apostles who, through the Spirit-inspired Scriptures, gave us instructions for what the church should look like and do (1 Timothy 3:15). Far from being a distraction, a church’s spiritual health is essential to its disciple-making efforts among the unreached. To illustrate this point, it may be helpful to think of two extremes that we need to avoid. Read More