Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

I just read a great message by Jim Sommerville at First Baptist Church in DC.  I wanted to give credit where credit is due before I blog.  Some of his thoughts resonated with my convictions! 

 

Matthew 4 says that after Jesus was tempted he set up his ministry headquarters in Capernaum.  Not only did that fulfill one of Isaiah's prophecies, but it models something.  Jesus started his ministry in Capernaum because it was the crossroads of the ancient world.  No place was more public.  The city lies in ruins today, but there is still a milestone that marks the Via Maris--the way of the sea. 

 

Capernaum was on the seaway between Asia and Africa.  If you wanted to get from one place to the other you would port in Capernaum.  And you couldn't get from Europe to Africa without going through Capernaum either.  It was the crossroads of the ancient world.  If you were trying to reach the world you couldn't find a more strategic location.  Jim Sommerville says, "Jesus may have made the decision about where to begin his ministry based on the same three rules so many people use today: location, location, location." 

 

Part of our DNA as a church is being in the middle of the marketplace.  We want to meet in the most public place we can find.  I think movie theaters and malls and coffeehouses and clubs are the Via Maris of our culture.  Union Station is even called "the gateway to the Nation's Capital."  I think there is movement afoot.  I think churches are moving back into the marketplace.  And I think it follows the example Jesus set. 

 

Part of me wonders, if Jesus was setting up his base camp in Washington, where he would meet.  I've got to think that Union Station would be on his shortlist. 

 

Sommerville says, "If you wanted to start a ministry that would touch the whole world it would be important to start it in the right place.  You would want to start it in a place that is, in some ways, the crossroads of the world, someplace like Massachusetts Avenue."