Last week we shared with you that over the next weeks we will share with you who Silver Creek Family Church is. It will be a time that we talk about where we are going as a church, what God is calling us specifically to be in our community and characteristics that we desire to be true about Silver Creek. Last week, we gave a real quick look at the history of this church, which included the merger of two churches about two years ago to establish what we are today.
Back in 1961, on May the 25th, President John F Kennedy stood before congress with an urgent request for more money to fund a project he felt was of great importance. In that speech he made the following incredible statement and challenge to NASA and America. "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."
Over the next eight years NASA took that as their primary mission. Understanding Kennedy’s instructions to mean, with every resource available, in every test that is made, with each experiment, rocket, man hour & conversation, direct them ultimately toward accomplishing that task. That mission of landing a man on the moon and bringing them safely back to earth.
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11, lunar module Eagle touched down in the Sea of Tranquility, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard. The men would exit the lunar module and walk on the surface of the moon. Four days later they would return safely to earth, completing the mission that had been so boldly laid out by President Kennedy.
The church, being every believer of Jesus Christ not just this local church, has also received a very direct mission statement from our leader Jesus Christ. In Matthew 28:19-20 this is the urgent request Jesus felt was of great importance.
Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.
The mission of the church is to make disciples of people regardless of boundaries, encourage them to state publically what Jesus has done in their lives through the act of baptism and then teach them what it looks like to live as a disciple of Jesus. The most confusing word in those verses is disciple and it’s what clarifies for us, what our task is to be about. A disciple is by definition a learner or pupil of a specific teacher, with the aim of becoming like that teacher in every way. In this case the teacher being Jesus himself.
Essentially we are charged with task of helping people decide to and then begin to live life in such a way as to learn how Jesus would live life. That people would then as a pupil of Jesus, not only learn how He lived but strive and become more and more able to live as He would.
The way we look at that, is that Jesus has called us to be in the business of life transformation. Because when living life our own way, each of us will ultimately choose to live outside or differently than the way that Jesus lived, demonstrated and called us to live. For any person to go from living for themselves to recognizing the need to become a disciple, learner and pupil of Jesus means that their life has been transformed. They’ve been made new. What they once were is no longer. Life now has different meaning, different values, different goals, different priorities because a life is transformed when it commits to being a disciple of Jesus and striving to become like Him in every way.
We do tons of events, activities, planning meeting, programs, ministries, connect groups, service opportunities and times together just like this morning. At the root, if you pulled back everything around each of everything we do, you’d find we this mission that Jesus Christ called us to. We are sold out, 100% committed to life transformation, that comes when someone is a disciple of Jesus Christ. That and that alone is sole purpose and reason that this church and any church that we consider brothers and sisters in Christ exists. Everything else, from passing out food at the food bank, to having inflatables for kids to bounce on, to bible studies, to having board game night last Friday is all in an effort to accomplish this one task.
That was the mission our leader gave us. That’s what he called us to do. That is what every resource we have available to us will be used to accomplish. Make disciples, see lives transformed, that is what Silver Creek exists to bring about in the lives those it touches.
We hope you believe in this mission and join with us in making it happen at Silver Creek,
Brent Hudson & Elizabeth Volz
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