Pass The Baton

The Gospel, and thus the local church, is only ever one generation away from disappearing from the face of the Earth. If no Christian alive today taught his children, or reached his friends with the Gospel, then there would be no church for our grandchildren to attend. It is one of the most remarkable, and overlooked, miracles that the church today still possesses and proclaims the apostolic Gospel.

How does that happen? We pass it on, we tell people about Jesus. We reach out to those who don't know Him, and we reach over, to help those who do know Him to know Him better. Paul shared this concern with Timothy in his final letter to him. If 2 Timothy 1 is about the protection of the Gospel, then 2 Timothy is about the propagation of the Gospel.  Paul tells Timothy to remember the Gospel he preached. Paul's not talking about a private conversation here, a ministry insight he shared with Timothy over coffee one day, but something that happened 'in the presence of many witnesses,' maybe at Timothy's ordination, or maybe just on a normal Sunday. Timothy's apostolic authority remained as long as he was faithful to the apostolic message. Paul didn't tell Timothy to reinvent the wheel. He didn't tell him to remember what the people in Ephesus liked, he simply told Timothy to remember the Gospel he had heard.

Then Timothy was the 'entrust' that message to others. He was to pass it on to 'faithful men.' This could've happened then and can happen now in a variety of ways. Firstly, it had to happen from the pulpit. As Timothy looked out on a Sunday morning at his people, he knew part of his job was to preach the Gospel to them, to help them remember what they had heard from Paul. But it had to happen elsewhere as well. When Timothy met with a troubled family, he had to remember the Gospel, when he married people, he had to remember the Gospel, when he went to buy bread, he had to remember the Gospel. And he had to pass the Gospel on. He had to find the faithful men in his church who he could train and disciple, the men to whom he could entrust the message. He had to meet with them, spend time with them, and love them, just as Paul had with him.

One thing i love about being a Youth Pastor is when i see someone's eyes opening to the joys of the Bible for the first time. The Bible stops being something their parents read, and becomes their's. It stops being something for Sundays and starts being food for the day. It stops being a chore and becomes a delight. I love seeing that and hearing that. I love passing it on.

At the moment, it's my responsibility to pass on what has been given to me. And soon it will be theirs. What a responsibility all of us, whether in paid ministry or not, have to find faithful men and women and teach them, the Gospel, so that they can pass it on in years to come.