A church that is well balanced is what we need, meeting the needs of everybody.
Their are a lot of people with good intentions that say that the church is supposed to be focused on evangelism and forget about the rest of the work that needs to be done.
They have good intentions, obviously there are too many churches that are not producing any new believers and they are focused on pleasing themselves, but it seems to me that focusing on any one group of people is wrong. Jesus focused on people with needs everywhere he went he saw people with needs and he was moved with compassion.
The church should be putting Christ first and then everybody else that has a need. An ideal mission statement would look like this:
Exalting the Savior, Evangelizing the Sinner, Enlisting the Servant, Equipping the Saved, and Edifying the Saints.
Some need to be evangelized, some need to be equipped to serve, some need to be trained in evangelism and some need to be built up and encouraged. All of these people have needs that need to be met and our example from Jesus is that we need to meet needs.
Jesus saw the needs of every person, he didn't ignore the twelve disciples after they believed in him as the Messiah, instead he took them in real close and invested time in them so that they would be qualified to serve, evangelize and create more disciples.
I know that too many churches have no new believers and that is wrong but it is also wrong to allow the saints to be weak, lazy, unequipped and defeated, after-all that was the sad condition of God's people when Jesus came to earth. If God's people were spiritually and emotionally healthy then they would be more likely to produce more Christians.
Churches that are experiencing long term success and stability are meeting the needs of the sinners, the saved, the servants and the saints.
