Outreach Isn't a Program. It's the Point.

Most small churches I know have a list, even if nobody ever wrote it down. First we get the worship service right. Then we work on discipleship. Then, once we have a solid foundation, we start thinking about reaching out. It sounds responsible, like good stewardship, and for a small church with limited resources and a heavy internal workload it feels like the only honest way to take the Great Commission seriously.

I understand it. Theologically speaking, though, it’s backwards.

The Great Commission isn’t the fourth item on the list, and it isn’t a ministry track or a committee. It’s the permanent, defining orientation of the church. In Turn the Key I put it this way: “The church does not exist for itself. It exists for the world.”

Why “someday” never comes

Picture an elder board that has agreed outreach matters. Everyone nods. But there’s a roof to fix, a youth leader who just moved away, and a budget that barely closes. So outreach waits for next year. Next year there’s a different roof.

These leaders care. What’s happened is that, without ever deciding it, they’ve made outreach something the church does after it’s healthy, instead of part of what makes it healthy. A church that waits until its internal house is in order before it looks outward will wait forever, because a church’s internal house is never fully in order. Somebody’s always sick and something’s always broken.

The Great Commission doesn’t wait on that list. It was given to eleven men who had just watched their leader crucified and raised, men with no building and no budget.

Three things in Matthew 28 worth slowing down over

Here’s what Jesus said:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18–20)

First, the authority. Jesus doesn’t say “if you feel ready” or “if your church is large enough” or “if your budget allows.” The commission flows from his authority, not ours. The church goes out because the one who has all the resources has commanded it, whether or not the church has resources of its own. That changes the question an elder board asks. “Are we ready?” is the wrong question. He’s ready, and he sent us.

Second, the scope. All nations. That includes every community, every town, every forgotten rural zip code. All nations was never just a megachurch assignment. A congregation of forty people in a township most maps barely label is included in that sentence too.

Third, the promise. “I am with you always.” The commission comes with a companion, because the one who sends also goes. The small church that steps out doesn’t step out alone.

John Piper opens his book on missions with a line that reframes the whole conversation. We don’t go out because outreach is the goal. We go out because there are people who don’t yet worship the God who is worth worshiping.

Start with your Jerusalem

Right before he ascended, Jesus gave the shape of the mission: “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).

See the concentric circles? Jerusalem first, the city where they already were. The mission begins locally and moves outward.

Every church’s Jerusalem is different. Yours is the community around your building, the neighbors whose names you may not know and the families whose cars break down and whose lives are coming apart a little at a time.

That’s where The Garage at Living Faith started, with one man, Michael, fixing cars in his driveway in one community. It hasn’t reached the ends of the earth. But it has reached hundreds of families in western Pennsylvania who needed a car fixed and met, in the process, people who cared whether they had enough to eat and whether they knew God loved them. It didn’t start because our small rural church had finished everything else. It started because a man had a gift and a church culture said, go ahead and try it.

The question has already been answered

This is the part I most want small church leaders to hear. The question for your church is not whether to do outreach. That was settled when Jesus spoke on a mountain in Galilee. The question is how, meaning what form, in what community, meeting what need, through which people.

That’s a much more hopeful question. “Whether” leads to putting it off again and again. “How” leads to a conversation about the actual people in your pews and the actual needs on your road, and it turns outreach from a burden you’ll get to eventually into a direction you’re already facing.

It also frees you from comparison. You don’t need to do what the big church across the county does. You need to be faithful with the Jerusalem you’ve been given, with the people you actually have.

Try this at your next leadership meeting

If you lead a church, here are two questions worth putting on the table. Both come from the discussion questions at the back of the book.

1. When your church talks about outreach, does it feel like a program you’re adding or a posture you already have? Be honest. The difference usually shows up in the budget and the calendar. A program gets squeezed when things get tight, while a posture shapes how you decide everything else.
2. What is one thing your church is doing that would not exist if the Great Commission were not true? If the room goes quiet, pay attention to that. Don’t treat it as a reason for guilt. Treat it as a place to begin.

Then do something small this week. Drive the few miles around your building slowly and write down what you see: who lives there, what’s closing, who seems to be struggling. That list is your Jerusalem. Pray over it by name.

You don’t have to be finished to begin

Small churches carry a lot of weight. I know. I was bi-vocational for twenty-five years, running businesses by day and pastoring the rest of the time, so I understand the pull to get the inside right before looking outside.

But outreach isn’t what a church does once it’s healthy. It’s part of what keeps a church from turning in on itself. The small church that begins with the Great Commission usually finds the rest of the list starts to make more sense.

If your leadership team wants to work through this together, the free Turn the Key leader’s guide lays out a planning series with every discussion question from the book. Start with Chapter 1, and start with your Jerusalem.