“We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.”
Acts 5:28
What an accusation! Ordered to stop preaching the name of Jesus, the apostles do the opposite and “fill Jerusalem” with the Gospel! Did they intend to bring the blood of Jesus upon the Jews and their leaders? In every sense, yes! What a stirring picture of our mission as a church – to fill the city with the good news of Jesus and bring the blood of Jesus upon everyone.
And this was precisely what Jesus sent the apostles to do!
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Acts 1:8
It’s so encouraging that Jesus phrased this as a promise rather than a command. And already in Acts 5 the promise is being fulfilled! God’s plan and power truly are unstoppable!
But most churches and church leaders don’t have a vision to reach an entire city. Most are content with the much smaller goal to build up their own churches. In the practical and inspiring book, To Transform a City, Eric Swanson presents these two contrasting visuals.
The goal of most churches is to attract people from every sector of society into their fellowship. In other words, we want to take the resources from the city and use them to build up our churches. This isn’t wrong but it is incomplete. All churches should desire growth and work to pursue growth. We should strive to attract people from every part of the city into our worship, fellowship and mission.
However, if our purpose stops there, we fall short of the great commission and the call of God! “We have not been called to hold the fort but to storm the heights” (Robert Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism). We should grow our church in order to reach and bless our city! The bigger and better vision is to reach the whole city!
We don’t gather simply to gather. We gather so we can go. We grow so we can reach. We draw people in so we can encourage, inspire and equip them, then send them back out as salt and light in our dark and dying city. The mission of the church is not to drain the resources of a city but to infuse the joy and love of Jesus into every part of the city!
This is a vision of Gospel Saturation: that every man, woman and child in Tampa Bay would have repeated opportunities to see, hear and respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This can only happen when the churches within a city stop seeing each other as competitors and come together as gospel partners – as ONE CHURCH with one mission, to reach the whole city together.
Let’s labor together to fill our city with the gospel of Jesus!