Guideline #10: COMMITTING TO EVANGELISM AS OUR PRIMARY MISSION

SERIES: “GOD-GIVEN GUIDELINES FOR GROWING A GREAT CHURCH”

TEXT: MARK 16:15-16

TITLE: Guideline #10: “COMMITTING TO EVANGELISM AS OUR PRIMARY MISSION”
(Material primarily from Bob Russel’s When God Builds A Church)

INTRODUCTION: A. I first read this story called “The Life Saving Station” in Knofel Staton’s Heaven
Bound Living:

On a dangerous sea coast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude
little life-saving station. The building was just a hut and had only one boat, but the few
devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea. With no thought for themselves,
they went out every day and night, tirelessly searching for shipwreck victims. Many
lives were saved by this wonderful little life-saving station, and so it became famous.
Some of those who were saved and various others in the surrounding area wanted to
become associated with the station and give their time, money, and effort for the
support of its work. New lifeboats were bought and new life-saving crews were
trained. The little life-saving station grew.
Some of the members of the life-saving station were unhappy that the building was
so crude and poorly equipped. They felt a little more comfortable place should be
provided as the first refuge of those who were saved from drowning. So they replaced
the emergency cots and the emergency beds and put in better furniture. Now the life-
saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it
beautifully and furnished it exquisitely because they used it as a sort of social club.
Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions so they
hired lifeboat crews to do the work. The life-saving motif still prevailed in the club’s
decoration and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club met.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast and the hired crews brought
in loads of cold, wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and some of them
had black skin, and some had yellow skin. The beautiful new clubhouse was
considerably messed up, so the property committee immediately had a shower house
built outside the club where the victims of the shipwrecks could be cleaned up before
coming inside.
At the next meeting there was a split in