City Life Starter

Written by Scott Fiddler

The Word

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation

2 Corinthians 5:17-19

Reflection

My freshman year at Stephen. F. Austin State University, our men’s basketball team was picked to finish no better than fourth in our conference at the beginning of the season. We had a good coach, though, who made sure we played together as a team, and ultimately as a team the whole was greater than the sum of our parts.

Good coaches train their players to understand their own role and the role of their teammates, and our coach did the same. The point guard’s job was to handle the ball and get it down the court and then transition the team into our offense. We had a power forward, whose principal role was as a rebounder.  We had a ‘6”11 center we were looking to post-up inside, and we had two forwards who did much of our scoring.

There was, however, one role we all shared: playing defense. If we didn’t all play good defense, it didn’t matter how well we each performed our roles at the other end of the floor, we would still lose. We played very good team defense, and as a result we ended up winning our conference and going to the post-season tournament. 

I Corinthians 12 explains that the Holy Spirit has given Christians specific gifts so they can minister within the church in a specific role unique to them, fitted to their spiritual abilities. We should embrace those roles and perform them well. But what the scripture above makes clear is that regardless of what specific role we may play in ministry within the church, as to the world, we have all been given the ministry of reconciliation. 

Application

That doesn’t mean we all need to be gifted evangelists; it does mean we all need to be evangelistic. It means we need to be building relationships with those who don’t know the Lord. Relationships are the bridges of the Kingdom, and they are the connection between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of God. As ministers of reconciliation we should constantly be building those bridges. 

If we are not sharing the gospel with those with whom we build bridges (and even if we are), we should be inviting them to church where they can be exposed to others who will.  In short, we should be investing in relationships with those who do not know the Lord and then inviting them to our community of believers, where they can continue on the path of reconciliation. There is more to the ministry of reconciliation, but invest and invite is a good start.

Prayer

Lord, help to build relationships with those who do not know You. Amen.