After posting this blog last week, I received an email from a friend questioning my quote of Acts 1:8, specifically the word “then”. This was an error. I was writing from my thoughts and application of this passage, and misquoted.
My belief regarding mission, and the application of this passage, remain the same. They are born from a study of this passage, the book of Acts as a whole, and the spread of Christianity in the first 100 years.
I would never want to twist/misquote Scripture, it is divinely inspired, and we must remain true to it. I appreciate the brotherly accountability, and seek to always remain above reproach in not only my lifestyle, but the teaching of the Word of God, and leading Palm Valley Church.
I’m often asked about our missions focus, such as: “what is our focus?”, and “how much do we budget for missions?”. My answer is simple: we’ve focused our mission ideology on Acts 1:8, and every dime we spend as a church is on mission. We’re focused on being obedient to what Christ told us, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, then and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”. What does this mean to us?
For the first 5 years of Palm Valley Church we focused on reaching our community for Christ. We focused all our attention, resources, creativity, people towards reaching our neighbors with the good news of a relationship with Jesus Christ. This has been, and always will be, our first and primary focus.
Beginning this year we began to “extend our reach”, and began focusing on reaching cultures around us that are different from the culture of Palm Valley Church. This fall we have sent dozens of volunteer teams to Phoenix Rescue Mission to serve and share, the Indian reservations of northern Arizona to reach children and their parents, delivered Christmas to 150 families of prisoners in the west valley, provided 200 care packages for soldiers in Iraq, sent teams to Mexico, and are preparing teams to return to Louisiana to help with people effected by hurricane Katrina. This week we have a team of 20 teenagers in Mexico (more later) helping a church reach their community.
It has been very cool to see Palm Valley Church begin to reach “Judea and Samaria”, In the future we will extend to reach around the world, and that excites me. We’re working on plans right now to build churches in Sudan and India, as a part of building our campus in the west valley. But it all comes back to me that we must first and foremost reach our community for Christ, or are efforts to extend our reach outward is really empty
