Mission and Commitments

At First Baptist Church Travelers Rest, we like to say that we exist to worship

God and win glory for King Jesus, but what does that mean? What does that mean we are committed to?

Well, in the first instance, it means that we are committed to the primacy of worship, and so we're committed to the primacy of worship because God deserves it.

God is the greatest being of all, and He deserves it. As Psalm 96 says, He deserves the glory due

His name, and so we're committed to the primacy of worship. We're also committed to the primacy of worship because that is who we are made to be.

We're made to be worshipers. It's the fundamental calling of humanity. You see, worship is inescapable.

It is not whether you will worship or not, but whom or what will you worship.

So here at First Baptist Church, we worship the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We're committed to the primacy of worship as well because worship shapes us. Worship, it conforms us into the image of Jesus.

It shapes our loves and our desires, and so what you worship, you will become like, or we might say it like this, what you behold, you will become, and so we worship the

Triune God so that we might be shaped and become more like Him.

We're also committed to the primacy of worship because worship has effect out into the world, and so one pattern that we see in the

Bible is that what happens in the sanctuary spreads out into the world, and so on the

Lord's Day, we gather as God's people before God. We are, like Ephesians 2 says, seated with Christ in the heavenly places, and we come before Him asking

Him that He might make things on earth as it is in heaven, and so worship has effect out into the world, and so we're committed to the primacy of worship.

And because we're committed to the primacy of worship, that means we're committed to right worship, and so we want to worship

God as He tells us and instructs us to do, and so that means that we are committed to ordered worship.

We're committed to Bible -saturated worship. When you come to First Baptist, we want you to hear the

Bible read. We want you to hear the Bible sung, the Bible prayed, the Bible preached.

We want the Bible to shape everything that we do in the worship service. We want our worship to be participatory.

You're not coming to get a show from the platform or from the stage, but you're coming to participate in the worship of God, and so we want you to give your amen at the end of a song, to actively hear the

Word of God read, and the Word of God preached, and to pray, and to join in the prayers of the church, and so to participate, because a passive worshiper will make a passive Christian, but an active worshiper will make an active

Christian, because remember, what happens in the sanctuary, what happens in worship, flows out into the world.

And lastly, I would say it like this, we want our worship to be weighty. When you come to worship God, we want to feel the weight of God's glory.

You see, when we come to worship God, it's not a trivial thing, because we're worshiping the living

God, the Lord of heaven's armies, and so we want to have our worship have the appropriate weight to it, but we also know that worship is joyful, because the

Lord, the living God, has welcomed us into His kingdom, He's welcomed us into His family by His Son Jesus Christ, and so our worship is one of both weight and joy.

Some have said it like this, serious joy, we want our worship to be an exercise in serious joy, and so we want to worship

God, but we also want to go out into the world and win glory for King Jesus. There are things out in the world we want to accomplish, and so because of that, we are committed to certain things, we're committed to preaching and teaching

God's Word, we want to teach and preach all the Bible for all of life, and we want to do so understandably.

We want to preach the Bible, all of it, so we believe that the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation is the authoritative, inerrant, infallible

Word of God. We believe it is sufficient for everything that we might face, because in principle at least, the

Scriptures address everything, and so we want to preach all the Bible, we want to push it out into the corners and apply it to all of life, so this isn't just our spiritual life or our church life, but we want to apply the

Bible to our home life, to our work life, to our school life, to our public life. The Bible has something to say about our whole being and our whole lives, and so we want to apply it in that way, and we want to do so understandably.

That means we want the average person in a travel dress to be able to come in, to hear our teaching, and to say, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

I at least understand, so we want to preach all the Bible for all of life understandably.

We're also committed to table fellowship and joyful Christian hospitality.

You see, Jesus opens His table to us, and then we want to open our tables to one another.

We want to share in life together as we share in Christ together, and so we want to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.

We want to gather together, often sharing meals as a way of sharing life, and so don't be surprised if you come to First Baptist if you don't get an invitation to stay and eat lunch with us afterwards, and don't be surprised if after we eat we sing because we're full of joy.

And so we want to be committed to table fellowship, to joyful Christian hospitality, and we're also committed to equipping our people to be salt and light out in the world, and so you see, we live in a time and a place and a society that desperately needs the gospel of Jesus Christ and the teaching of God's Word, and we live in a time that needs hope, that needs peace, but also needs instruction, and so we want to equip our people to go out into the world and preserve and also promote what is good and right and true and beautiful and glorious, and we want our people to be salt in that way, but we also want them to be light, shining the light of the

Scriptures into every part of life and shining the hope that comes through Jesus Christ into every part of life, and so we're committed to equipping our people to go out into the world loving what

God loves, hating what God hates, having the courage to stand where God stands, and to have the mercy to extend to all people around us, and so we're committed to being salt and light.

And then lastly, I would say we're committed to prayer. We want to saturate everything that we're doing in prayer, and this is because we know that ultimately everything comes down from God.

You know, we work, we plan, we serve, we do things, we plant and we water, but it is

God who gives the growth. Every good and perfect gift comes down to us from the Father of Lights, James tells us, and so recognizing

God as the source of everything that is good, recognizing that we can do nothing that we want to accomplish in our own strength, we want to commit ourselves to prayer.

So we go to God, the God who loves to give good gifts to His children, who delights to do so, and we ask

Him. We ask Him for help. We ask Him for healing. We ask Him for strength, and so we go to God.

And so in these ways, we are committed to worship God and to win glory for King Jesus.