The mission of First Baptist Church is to develop missionary disciples who worship God, grow spiritually, and share the Gospel and their spiritual gifts.

WORSHIP – Our lives are made to glorify God and recognize Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We love God by glorifying him through obedience and showing others what Jesus is like in our words and actions.  (Luke 10:27)

GROW – Developing Disciples, Spiritual Growth & Maturity, Fellowship. We love each other as we mature to become more like Jesus and we help disciple each other to grow and mature spiritually. We do this through intentional fellowship and living life involved in each other’s lives.  (1 Thessalonians 4:3 and Ephesians 4:13)

SHARE – Called to share the Good News of the Gospel and God’s love with our community & the world and to share our spiritual gifts and abilities. We love our local community and communities around the world by serving them and sharing the Gospel with them. God places believers together in local churches to be part of a living body each doing one or more parts.  (Matthew 28:19-20 and Ephesians 4:15-16)

Our three-week series will be looking more closely at how we put this into actions of love – again individually and together as a church family. Worship and Love God. Grow and Love each other. Share and Love our community.

Today we will look at the third command: Share or Love Our Community

First we are called to share the Gospel. We love our community by sharing the life-giving message of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection with them.

When we love our neighbors and people in our community, we show them God’s divine love.

When we are willing to sacrifice our pride or even giving something up for the people in our community, they will see and better understand Jesus’ sacrificial love on the cross.

People will know you are my disciples when they see your love. What is First Baptist known for in our community? A nice building. A small but caring school? Are we known for love?

People won’t come ask for help or see answers when all they see is anger, pride, self-righteousness, or despair and loss of hope for the world. But they just might come when they experience first-hand God’s love through you.

We cannot love our community in our own strength, but when we experience God’s grace and forgive love, He will be glorified as we live and love others.

To keep loving even when they don’t love back. We love our community because Jesus commanded us to.

We don’t love our communities because we want them to love us. We love our neighbors and the people in our community because God loves them and we hope that they will over time come to know Jesus as Savior, and better understand and love God themselves.

We love our community anticipating that souls will be saved as we show God’s love and His glory to the people around us.

In addition to sharing the gospel and God’s love we are called to share our spiritual gifts and abilities within the local church and our community. As we are each unique parts of the body of Christ, we have been supernaturally equipped for one or more areas of service.