ReCAST Church began over 9 years ago with a small group of eager Christ-followers who stepped out in faith to begin a new work. Everybody had a role to play and nobody could just sit by and observe. Further we knew that if this church was going to succeed we needed to get the word out and the Word out.
There was vitality, energy, and enthusiasm for the expansion of the kingdom of God in our little community. And these things flowed out of a very natural focus on God’s plan to bring more in.
Fast-forward 9 years and ReCAST has been in our new building for almost a year and we have somewhere between 8-10x the number of people on a Sunday morning compared to our first service in a basement. And we need to work hard at keeping the mission in front of us. The natural slide in the human heart is toward complacency. When we stretch out for a challenge we work for it. When we accomplish hard things, we tend to take a break and lose focus.
ReCAST is still reaching out to our community. We still have new people coming every Sunday and many who are staying around. But it is clear to me as a “church-planter turned pastor”, that it takes a concerted effort to keep the church on target with reaching out.
Once we moved into our new building it was easy to think we’ve arrived. It is easy to get the wrong-minded perspective that we serve the facility, or that we need to increase programming for US, or that once we fill these seats we are full enough.
God only has one Mission for his church: To go and make disciples. Those who come in, need to be taught and encouraged and strengthened, SO THAT they can go and make more disciples of Jesus. All of our focus at ReCAST needs to be centered on this fundamental task of the church. Our mission statements puts it this way, “we exist to worship Him and to find more worshipers for His name”.
As the church grows, it can be difficult to keep things from drifting off course. But I am grateful for a church that is continuing to seek to make disciples, by “finding more worshipers for His name!”