What is our mission as a church? Here are the things that strike me as we talked: Glory God through relationship-based ministry. REAL FRIENDS, REAL FAMILY, and REAL FAITH. It’s all about relationships.

• REAL FAITH = being Christ’s. Worship and intercession. Ironically, our mission statement doesn’t begin with a mission: it begins and ends with Jesus. If we build an empire here and have a major impact on improving our community, but we run ahead of Jesus while doing so, dare I say, we have gained nothing. It’s all about Jesus. In assemblies and small groups, individually and collectively, our first mission is to know God and walk with him. Our vision is to be spiritual people, and if it’s all about relationships (and it is), then it’s all about being in relationship with God. Our deeply held belief is that Sunday morning is not the only place where the Spirit is active. In fact, if you need to come to church in order to get God, something is missing in your relationship with the Lord. Assemblies are when the spiritual people gather together to sharpen each other. Perhaps over four years you have noticed that I try to reflect my ministry philosophy on Sundays in our assembly; I assume that all of those who are in Christ have stories to tell—we call them God stories, or testimonies—and that one of the main purposes of our assembly is to build one another up by sharing our stories with one another. It’s not about coming to hear a professional deliver a well-manicured message; it’s more powerful if everyone comes every week with the story of another miraculous encounter with the supernatural. The Bible calls that prophecy. Question: Are we doing this well? Some of the most mature saints I know are a part of this fellowship. When we first started, some of the folks from the old Price Hill United Church of Christ tried to stay around. Most didn’t stay, but I heard from those who visited how impressed they were with the spiritual life among these people. The fact that we even have a prayer room and have several people in there for hours every week is very positive and encouraging. The Wilsons group does a prayer office every week, and almost every week we hear some wonderful God stories. We have worshipers here who are among the elite front-line worshipers in this city. We print up the lectionary readings every week and include a link to the readings on the web page, as well as several links to helpful Christian sites, because we want to encourage people to be self-feeders. Yet, we could improve. I’d sure like to be hearing some powerful God stories more often on Sunday mornings, and I would like to see more people in the prayer room on Sunday mornings or Thursday afternoons. I think it’s time to add an open worship and ministry time to our schedule, and I’m waiting on confirmation from the Lord for that.
• REAL FAMILY = being Community. Maturing as disciples. Jesus calls not just “you” and “me,” but he calls “us” into relationship. We are built into his temple; we are his body; we are his bride; we are a colony of heaven here on this earth. Therefore, we are called to hear from God and do ministry, mostly in small groups of people who are deeply committed to one another. These small groups we call house churches, and you might say that the second part of our mission is to train house church leaders through sending out people to plant house churches and in turn disciple still others. Our primary work is through personal ministry and small groups more than programs. Question: Are we doing this well? We are doing extremely well. I see four pretty healthy house churches (five if you count Ben’s group), and these groups have been through some tough times together. And consider all of the wild successes that we have had in training and sending people. Look at the flags at the back of the room, representing nations where our members have been. Seth Aldridge, Rich Wideman, Corey Bullock, Mark Scherer, Ben and Ruthie Gregory, Trey Vater, Josh Paroubek, Jay and Jodi Horn, Rick and Paula Miller, Dan and Addriane Allison, and now Tom Powell and his family, all people we have touched and healed or restored and trained and sent out. Valerie Stephens, estranged from her biological family, found cciph to be her family by the blood of the Lamb. She died in January of last year with Real Family. Beyond our formal house churches, a lot of CCU students have resonated with the call, and we have many informal groups loosely associated with this fellowship. An entire Guatemalan congregation owes its existence to us. Becky, Daniel and Cora all have identifiable groups that they are in purposeful community with. A group in Covington, a group in Clifton, a group on Glenway, all more or less align with our network. I would like to see more students from CCU commit themselves to this body and receive the training and support that I have long visualized. And I see folks who are keeping polite distances from others and refuse to go deeper, and some folks who are honest but lacking in love and grace. We need more leadership training, I believe. And I think plans will be forthcoming.
• REAL FRIENDS = being in Price Hill. Community outreach/relationships. Our third call is to reach our neighborhood, which includes this local neighborhood around the building. I have challenged us before to consider “tithing” our energy and prayer for ministry to the people in this neighborhood. Mostly you will do ministry with your circle of influence, but giving some energy and attention at least to the people who live here is appropriate, as long as we have a building here. We do outreach through hospitality, ministry and programs. Programs tend to be “come to us” oriented, but we are designed to focus on going and serving. Question: Are we doing this well? How many here this morning were not part of this fellowship 4 years ago? How many have come to a deeper understanding of Christ in the last years or months? Charlie and Donna, are you talking with people in this neighborhood? Michael and Heather, have you invested in the people of Price Hill? Tom and Kerri, how busy is your schedule in meeting the needs of people? I look around the room and see that not many of us are waiting for something to happen; we are making it happen as the Lord leads us. Did you know that “we” have a nursing home ministry? A prison ministry? A food and clothing pantry that serves dozens of families, hundreds of people, every month? So we might not feel as if we are doing much outreach, but I think individually, there is a huge amount of outreach happening. Within the first year of our existence as a church, I heard more than once from Price Hill Will and other organizations that everywhere people turned, the name cciph was coming up. They said, “You folks are everywhere!” Could we do more? I think it would be great if more people come and float around and talk to people at the monthly community meals. And I would love to see us re-establish monthly prayer walks and street cleanup and Friday Night Live.

You say, “Nice sounding theory. Where did you get it?” I got it by looking at the life of Jesus and the early church.

How did Jesus do ministry? I notice that these same three values or priorities marked our Lord’s ministry. Before Jesus begins his public ministry he has a very personal, very private wilderness experience. Jesus says that He says nothing except what his Father says, and everything else that he does flows out of the relationship he has with his Father (REAL FAITH = It’s all about relationships).

Then notice how Jesus does leadership training. In two words: “Follow Me.” He trained his disciples by spending time with them (that’s why His name is Emmanuel—God with us). Eventually he calls twelve men, who are called disciples, whose main job description is to be “with Jesus.” Their credentials were not academic degrees or Bible studies, but having lived in proximity with Emmanuel (REAL FAMILY = It’s all about relationships.).

And how did our Lord do outreach? Mostly he reacted or responded to the questions and needs of people—both his disciples and the crowds, usually one person at a time. Jesus goes on to teach in synagogues and to heal people. The news spreads about him and large crowds follow him—not because he advertised and put up signs that next Tuesday he would be doing something special, but because he does special things every day and people want to be with him (REAL FRIENDS = It’s all about relationships.). On and on we go, with Jesus ministering to people in response to their needs. He wasn’t a teaching specialist or a healing specialist or a full-time counselor or a political activist—he was God With Us, and he did whatever was needed. That’s my model for ministry, and I think it was the model of the early church. Most Christians today do not use the ministry model or methods that their Lord used. I believe passionately that it is the right model. It’s time to say it again.

Okay, Ken, that sounds wonderful and idealistic. But does it work? This is the year 2006 in the United States of America, and our culture is very different from the New Testament culture. Let me ask you: what is the most powerful witnessing tool there is? Far and away, nothing even comes close?

When I see Jesus in power, and when my life is changed by that power, then I don't have to be an eloquent speaker, or a trained counselor, or an organized administrator. My life itself becomes my most powerful witnessing tool. And there it is: A changed life is the most powerful witnessing tool there is.

If Jesus makes no change in me, it doesn't matter what manipulative or guilt-driven techniques I use to convert others; no one wants what I have to give. When I was in junior high, we had a frankly boring Sunday school class for about a half dozen young teenage boys. Every week the teacher would tell us to bring a friend, but we never did, because the class wasn’t yielding life change in us. I wasn’t a Christian yet, and was not motivated to become one.

On the other hand, my Sunday school teacher’s son, Kevin, had a student-led meeting at his house every week. Imagine this: the entire meeting was student led, student planned, and student attended. Within a year, several of us had come to Christ (myself included), and we were packing fifty junior high kids in Kevin’s basement. Within months of coming to Christ, I was given a leadership role, teaching one of the small groups in the Jesus Person Maturity Manual. You see, if Jesus radically and miraculously changes me, others will ask what makes the difference; and all I need to say is, "Let me be clear: Jesus made the difference! Come and see!"

That experience has shaped everything about my ministry philosophy. Two adages have stayed with me: “Those who teach learn best.” And “More is caught than taught.”

Okay, you say, this life-change, friendship evangelism worked for you. But if it works so well, why don’t other churches use it? I think the answer is because this method can be much, much slower than we are used to.

Some years ago, the Read family decided on a mission statement, that our priority is home-based hospitality ministry. At every juncture, we try to ask the question, “Does this draw us together as a family, or pull us apart? Can we do this through our home, rather than leaving to minister to other people’s families?” If it undermines our best energy going into our family, we think twice before committing to it. For us, home-based hospitality ministry is the most effective we can do.

We had a young man live in our house for about eight months. He had grown up in a broken home and needed some more direct life-on-life healing. To make a long story short, he married a lovely lady not long ago, and said to me, “Everything I know about being a husband and father I learned from watching you.” Do you know, we never once sat down and talked about how to be a godly husband and father?

I take a gamble when I pour all of me into my wife and children and those to whom we can minister as a family. But it is worth the gamble. And we won’t have little ones in our home forever. Well, maybe we will. But that’s not the point.

Shortly after we were married, Ellen and I worked every summer in Christian camps, and we touched several young lives and baptized some of them into Christ. But the season changed for us, and we have stayed home for the last 20 summers. Yet, in the last five years, our children have had more impact in camps than we would have had over the last twenty.

I think of what Jesus said about his disciples doing "greater works" than He Himself did. There may be other layers to His meaning, but maybe it's at least partly because our Lord poured Himself into eleven lives, and now there were eleven men, not just one, to do the work. We have invested ourselves primarily in our children and their contacts, and I feel affirmed that ultimately we made the right choice. Light touches of the masses pale in comparison to deep life change in a few.

And so, we do ministry that takes advantage of our season of life. We have toddlers at home. If you see the kind of traffic we have in and out of our home, you will realize that we have our hands more than full already ministering to our eight children and our natural web of influence. What is your season of life right now? Let me encourage you to do what would be best for you in your current station.

And I will have to trust that in the end, when we look back on a lifetime of service for Christ, we will be satisfied that we have made the right choices.