What is outreach?

Outreach is meeting the needs of our community and world while expressing God’s love in ways that build relationship and provide opportunities to share God’s plan of salvation.

Outreach

Why is outreach important?

Outreach is important to our church because it is important to God and that makes it important to every Christian for the following reasons:

Before His ascension, Jesus told the disciples that their impact on the world should start in their city and expand its influence into the entire world (Matthew 28.19; Acts 1:8; 2 Peter 3:9).

Worship, discipleship, and serving are important, but if you never progress to the next stage of maturity by being involved in outreach, you will be spiritually lacking and incomplete. In life, organisms that cannot reproduce themselves are generally considered immature, unnatural, unhealthy, or damaged. If one is truly walking with God in discipleship, worship, and service, then outreach will be a natural result. All living things have the ability to produce offspring like themselves. A living church is reproducing, while a dying church has no heart or burden for the lost in their community, state, nation and world (Matthew 9:9-12).

The Bible tells us that doing God’s work is like a tree bearing a lot of fruit. Jesus told us that God is glorified when we bear fruit by reaching out to others (John 15:8; 1 Timothy 2:3–4).

Jesus taught us that serving others is the same as serving Christ himself (Matthew 25:31–46).

Outreach is to a church what birth is to humanity. Without the reproduction of faith the body of Christ would cease to exist (Luke 15:7).

Of the six billion people in our world, two billion live in unreached people groups with no access to the good news about Christ. Two-thirds of the world’s population are lost without Christ and will not know Him unless Christians fulfill their obligation to go, tell and send (Matthew 28.19; Romans 10:14).

The Bible is very clear that God intends to bless those whose hearts are focused on reaching out to lost and hurting people. God clearly affirms those who share His passion and heart for reaching out to those who do not know Him (Genesis 12:1–3; Luke 6:38).

Loving our community and world will require individual and organizational cooperation. It calls each of us to set aside our individual preferences and combine our time, talents, and treasures (Ecclesiastes 4:9).

How does outreach happen at Highpoint Church?

Although outreach can occur through many ways, we maintain strategic alignment with our church’s purpose, focus, and vision for outreach by focusing on the following:

Community outreach is ministry directly to our community focusing on:

  • Our immediate community and neighborhood: Priority shall be given to opportunities that meet the needs of those who reside within a five-mile radius of our present church facility or our new Southlands location.
  • Ministry directly to the unchurched: Outreach efforts should not fulfill the role of a “ministry middle man” between existing ministries or social programs and the unchurched. Our goal is to get our people involved in direct ministry to the unchurched of our community.
  • Community focused: Network with community leaders, organizations, and individuals of our city to maintain an awareness of need and opportunity.

National and international outreach will consist of resourcing, encouraging, and financing approved foreign and domestic missionaries. These ministries will be outside our community, but within our state, nation, and world. These efforts will be coordinated by the Lead Pastor.

Outreach

What does outreach look like?

Since international outreach is limited to financial support, prayer effort, and encouragement, this section will specifically address local outreach.

Outreach at Highpoint Church, to put it simply, will be hands-on. It is far too easy to send money or gather supplies, but here at Highpoint Church we want our outreach and community involvement to work directly with the unchurched. We will be creating out-of-the-box and fun environments to connect those in our church with those in our community.

Priority shall be given to opportunities that meet the needs of those who reside within a five-mile radius of our church facility.

Outreaches will be church-wide with opportunities for individuals or groups to participate and will contribute toward their success.

They will focus on the needs of the people in our community.

We will seek to introduce others to Christ and help them to the next stage of spiritual growth in their journey to maturity.

Our outreaches will strive to be relational as opposed to event driven.