“The Ordinary Means of Ordinary Outreach: Reaching Our World without Losing Our Way, Part 2: Sacrament”

By Nick Robison

The mission and purpose of church outreach are best summarized by Christ in the commission that he gave his church: to go 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 obey all of his commandments. These marching orders tell us that by reaching out to the world, we are to draw them into the covenant communion of the Church. Discipleship does not end at the water cooler at work or wherever the gospel is first believed. It follows the road that brings us into communion with the people of God.

Unfortunately, many churches and denominations have adopted a policy of outreach that involves conforming the church to the image of the world in some way, thus making the church more palatable. For instance, if the church is seeking to draw in more young people the worship becomes more youthful and energetic. On the other hand, if the church is targeting another niche group, such as “cowboys,” the service will take on a more western theme.

Now it might be good to offer a little conviction on this matter. This is something that churches can do without even realizing it. In 2016, I know of many members of Presbyterian churches who voted for Donald Trump that were made to feel as if they had done something immoral and hurtful by things said from the pulpit. I know of others whose experience was the reverse. They had not voted for President Trump and were anxious about what was to come from his presidency, only to find in their churches, rather than Christ centered worship that left political concerns in the parking lot, a political victory parade in the guise of Christian fellowship. We must ask the question and be serious in answering it, “Do our church services, how we decorate, or how we preach focus on attracting only certain kinds of people with specific political affiliations to our congregations?”

I bring this up to make a point. If our worship of Christ is made contemporary to our present time or culture, our worship becomes enslaved to current events and proclivities. By allowing the secular to invade the sacred, we have tragically, and perhaps inadvertently, made the sacred less appealing to those who have grown weary of the vanity of the secular. This is precisely what we see taking place in our world. More and more people are beginning to wake up to the fact that they have been sold a lie by those who seem influential in the world. Atheism has not offered them the hedonistic utopia that they were promised. Guilt and shame did not disappear with their belief in God, and now, rather than having a compassionate and merciful God to go to with their sin, they have nothing but a blind, pitiless, and indifferent universe of stuff. These people have judged the secular and have found it to be wanting.

How unfortunate it is that all some churches have to offer these people is more secular art, music, motivational speeches, and politics all rebranded with a Jesus FishTM slapped on it. We, as

Presbyterians, must have something to offer the world that is not of this world. Something like the Kingdom of God! (John 18:36)

There is nothing more peculiar to the Church of Christ than the sacraments that He has given to us, through which he gives us the grace that sets us apart from the secular world. These sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are things that are not given to the world but only to those in the household of faith. Baptism is given to those who have believed in Christ and their children, whereas the Lord’s Supper is given to those who are able to feed upon Christ as he is offered in the elements of bread and wine by faith alone.

The exclusivity of the sacraments, however, does not make them unserviceable in our outreach to the world. Christianity is not a gnostic religion, whereby we hide secret knowledge from outsiders. There is no “inner sanctum” of knowledge or revelation that the church has been commanded to keep out of the sight of the unenlightened. Though for unbelievers to take part in the sacramental practices of the church is forbidden, all outsiders who are willing are invited to come and observe all that we say and do. This is why the Reformed have always been quick, after they have fenced the table, to extend to the unrepentant an invitation to stay and watch the faithful partake of the Lord’s Supper. This is because much of the Christian’s hope is testified to by our zealous access to the Table of our Lord.

We see this in how John Calvin defined the sacraments: “We may define such sacraments as ceremonies by which the Lord seeks to train his people, first to support, exercise and strengthen faith within the heart, and then to attest religion before man.”1 Calvin here distinguishes between the sacraments’ internal and external functions. Internally, the sacraments edify faith present in the heart, but externally, they bear witness to our religion before man. I take this to reference all of those who witness the sacrament, regardless of whether or not they have partaken.

But of what good are the sacraments apart from a person’s participation? To see this good, we must understand that the sacraments are not graces given apart from the Word of God, but instead are graces given under and through the Word of God. This is why Puritans such as William Perkins believed that apart from the proclamation of the Word of God to the ears, the elements of the Supper could provide no nourishment to the soul. So, Perkins calls the sacraments “signs representing to the eyes that which the word doth to the ears.”2 Therefore, when the sacraments are received by those inside the covenant community, they preach the gospel to our welcomed guests.

This is something that we see illustrated by God’s commands concerning Old Testament Israel’s treatment of sojourners and resident aliens. Though the non-Jewish could partake in the “burnt

offerings” (Lev. 17:8-9), the majority of Jewish feasts and sacrifices would not have allowed the Gentiles within the gates to participate in the festivities, yet they would not have been removed from the midst. They would have been invited to observe what was taking place and to place themselves in the same mental space as their Jewish hosts. This is seen clearly when we read the laws concerning the enactment of the “Day of Atonement” in Lev. 16:29, where we read that both the Jews and the sojourner among them are to “afflict” or “humble” themselves and do no work. So, although the Gentile stranger would not have had the opportunity to partake in the priest’s work of atonement, he was nonetheless called upon to join Israel in the effort of fasting and self-denial.

In the same way, the Christian Church does not ask that outsiders excuse themselves from our congregation as we observe our Lord’s sacraments. On the contrary, we ask that they stay and observe what is taking place so that they may hear the words of Christ’s institution and learn from what we are doing and how we are doing it.

By doing this, outsiders come into contact with something that is contrary to their secular world, which directs all people to look within for hope. But when they see our taking of the Lord’s Supper, they see us taking up the task of self-examination. Our secular world tells us to look inside ourselves so that we might find the good within, but at the Lord’s Table, we are asked to examine ourselves so that we might find our weakness and sin so that we might be taught to rely more and more upon Christ’s sacrifice, which becomes more endearing to us once we have determined through introspection that we are lost apart from his broken body and redeeming blood. As Gentiles were invited to humble themselves during the Day of Atonement, so we invite our guests to examine themselves and pray that they might find their need for Christ and become jealous for what we have found signed and sealed in those little tokens of Christ’s body and blood.

Our secular world also teaches us that the man or woman who is truly happy is the one who is self-fulfilled, but in our baptism, we are taught something different. We are taught that we are nothing apart from our union with another, the Lord Jesus Christ. By baptism, we are taught that by faith we are joined together with Christ in his death and resurrection and are thereby forgiven of all trespasses and made alive unto righteousness. Not only that, but we are also taught that we are in union with our brothers and sisters, not according to the flesh, but according to the faith. This is such a comforting truth to be shared with our unbelieving neighbors who labor on the secular path of self-reliance. We are made in the image of the Triune God; therefore, we are social creatures desiring communion and fellowship. There is no deeper fellowship than that shown when one of our infant children is brought forward for baptism. In the ARP, whenever a child of a believing parent is baptized, not only does the parent make a vow to raise the child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, but so does the congregation. According to our Directory of Public Worship, the congregation is to be asked, “Do you, the members of this congregation, undertake with these parents the covenant responsibility for the Christian nurture of this child?” What this little vow tells our guests is that when a child is baptized into the church, the church is not just receiving the child, but the child is receiving mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters in the

faith who take upon themselves the same spiritual responsibilities as the parents. There is no fellowship like Christian fellowship!

I hope this article has been an encouragement to its readers to make use of our communion or baptism Sundays for the purpose of reaching out to our wayward neighbors. I especially hope that it has encouraged you to become more zealous for the grace that the Lord gives to us through His sacramental means. I pray that the Lord will use His people’s zeal for the sacraments to kindle a quickening jealousy in the hearts of the lost, leading them to Christ’s saving mercies, which are preached through the visible words of His sacraments.

1 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Robert White (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2023), 574.

2 Quoted in Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 750.