This last Sunday I was back in our Nehemiah study and talking about the importance of community as illustrated by Nehemiah working to rebuild the foundations of Jewish community after the walls and gates of Jerusalem were completed. In the context of community, I briefly mentioned eight spheres of influence in life. So brief was the mention, in fact, that I was asked to repeat them by some who struggled to write them down.

Here are some key points about community that provide the context for what I had to say about these spheres of influence.

• The church is community. Church is not something we attend; we are church.
• We don’t “go to church;” we are the church. Because we are the church, we assemble together to worship, grow, learn, be equipped, built up and trained to live as God would have us.
• Our goal, therefore,  should not be simply to see how many people we can get to “come to church,” but how many of us can be equipped to go out and live out the love and life of Christ though the spheres of influence where God has placed us.
• If the above is a reality, not only will be be witnesses of Christ in our spheres of influence, the healthy church also grows in influence, reaching more and more people with the Gospel.

In that context, I mentioned that a pastor in Texas (Bob Roberts) lists eight spheres of life influence that pretty well encompasses who we are. Those eight areas are: family, economics, governance, medicine, agriculture, education, justice and the arts.  Your talents, gifts and experiences place you in one or more of these areas.

In the last part of the Twentieth Century, evangelical Christianity went through a period of over-emphasis on what was often called “full time Christian service.” The unspoken but implicit message perceived by many was that if you were not a pastor, evangelist, youth worker or missionary, you were a second-class Christian.

The truth of scripture is that every follower of Jesus Christ is to be a “full time” witness of him. God has always called out a few individuals who are gifted to serve as pastors or missionaries, and he will continue to do so. The mission, however, encompasses us all. Our responsibility is not to divide life into “secular” and “sacred,” but to live as a full representative of Jesus Christ in the context of whatever be our vocation or sphere of influence.

Be the church!