Building to Send
Written by Pastor Andrew Spradlin
News flash: The kingdom of God is much bigger than Valley Baptist Church! Now, that truth shouldn’t make us feel insignificant; it should encourage us that we’re not alone. It should also help us realize that our strategy for reaching the world for Christ must advance beyond the walls of our church.
In the book of Acts, the early church went from adding disciples to multiplying disciples. They also moved from adding churches to multiplying churches. We must do the same in Bakersfield and around the world!
If we filled every parking spot and every chair on all of our campuses, we would only be able to hold about 2% of Bakersfield’s population. That’s significant, but as we give to our new building dedicated to making disciples, we must do so praying that many of the people discipled in this building will be sent to help start other churches in our city and beyond.
I believe a church is best measured not by its seating capacity but by its sending capacity. To date, our church has amazingly baptized 9,974 people. Yet many of those people aren’t here anymore – so where are they? They are scattered throughout our city, state, nation, and world in other churches. Dozens of them have become pastors and missionaries serving around the world.
Our new building will be a disciple-making factory, not just for us but for the glory of God and the advancement of the gospel throughout our city and world. Gathering for Life Groups on Sundays is very important, but it’s not the end game. In many ways, it’s a means to an end. We gather each week to be scattered. When we leave our campuses having heard from God’s Word, experienced biblical love and community, and worshiped our Lord together, we are then scattered back to our homes, neighborhoods, workplaces, and world.
I don’t believe we are scattered to those places by accident but for a purpose. Jesus said in John 20:21, “As the Father has sent me, I send you.” Jesus is sending us to someone, somewhere, every week. Our new building is all about advancing the gospel throughout our city and world. We are building to send.
