What Are We Good For?
February 2023
Benjamin Franklin was one of the foremost of our nation’s founding fathers who also helped draft our Declaration of Independence. In 1773 he served as the speaker of the House of Representatives in the State wherein GFF has been headquartered since 1935—the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. A young man is said to have broken an appointment with Dr. Franklin and came to him the following day to apologize. Franklin stopped him and said, “My good boy, say no more, you have said too much already; for the man who is good for making an excuse, is seldom good for anything else.”
Each local church which names Christ as her head has been Divinely designed and dually directed to make disciples of all nations—those from their midst in “God’s husbandry” who are themselves disciples going to make disciples in other fields! (1 Cor. 3:9) We call them missionaries. The Bible simply identifies them as “preachers being sent.” (Rom. 10:14-15) While many local churches are mere barren fields unable to yield “preachers to send” except by chance—certainly not on purpose—others who have sent missionaries are seeing them return in droves after only a short stint. The long & short of it is that we are hemorrhaging missionaries from the mission field with none to replace them. As we are certain that Christ can heal the hemorrhage if we are faithful to bind up the wounds, we are also certain that God can produce preachers to send and stay if we produce the fruit of discipleship through God’s husbandry—our local church. The soil wherein the local church grows is rich to bring forth fruit in her season. What she lacks is the deliberate bearing of fruit to detach from the tree and be carried away to die in another field. (Jn 12:24)
The question, then, really comes down to this—what are we good for? Making disciples or making excuses? Let’s be the church which is good for making disciples!
Praying & Pleading!
Rodney Myers
GFF General Director