I often feel guilty because I rarely feel like I am doing enough to impact my town for Jesus. I need to evangelize more. I need to disciple more. I need to serve more. I need to pray more. I need to preach more effectively and persuasively. I need to pastor better. And surely, I have a long way to go in each of these areas.
But I also have come to recognize that I cannot change my town, much less the world, by myself. Even my church cannot reach our community on its own.
Ultimately, there is a life-altering and world-changing tool that Jesus can use to impact individuals, communities, and the globe for His glory: relationships.
When I think about how the Lord saved me 15 years ago, it was through a group of friends surrounding me, showing me what it means to live for Christ, and sharing the gospel with me regularly. God used a group of friends — Matt, Alex, Josh, Joe, and Robert — who became my friends and taught me what it meant to know, follow, and worship Jesus.
In the individualized West, it can feel like I am the one who needs to create change and help people know Jesus. And clearly, I do have a responsibility, but I don’t have to do it alone.
Relationships Change the World
Relationships are vital in the Bible — think Ruth and Naomi, Jonathan and David, Paul and Timothy, and Jesus and His 12 disciples.
Paul concludes his greatest theological treatise by listing a bunch of people’s names who he wants to greet in Rome and who want to send their greetings to the church in Rome (Rom. 16).
Throughout all of history, relationships have played a significant role in spreading the good news of Jesus Christ from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Wherever you are reading this now, churches and individuals partnered together to help the gospel get to that place.
In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter argues, “[T]he key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network [of individuals and friends] and the new institutions that are created out of those networks … . This is where the stuff of culture and cultural change is produced.” The world is changed and shaped most strongly by groups of people.
A Little Band of Brothers Changed the World
One such group of people is the pastoral leaders of the Northamptonshire Particular Baptist Association (NPBA), founded in 1764 in England. These men formed friendships and mentorships that provided personal encouragement and accountability. In a letter in 1822, Christopher Anderson, a Scottish pastor, describes the unique power of these friendships:
I know that in order to much good being done, co-operation, the result of undissembled love, is absolutely necessary…; might I be but one of a little band of brothers who should do so, and who should leave behind them a proof of how much may be accomplished in consequence of the union of only a few upon earth in spreading Christianity, oh how should I rejoice and be glad …! Such a union in modern times existed in [Andrew] Fuller, [John] Sutcliff, [Samuel] Pearce, [William] Carey, and [John] Ryland [Jr.]… . In such men…, there was little or no expectation, no anticipation of results.
There may have been no expectations of anything happening through these relationships, but the world was fundamentally changed for Jesus by this group of no-name pastors coming together to make Jesus known.
In his diary in 1788, pastor John Ryland Jr. wrote, “Brethren Fuller, Sutcliff, Carey, and I kept this day as a private fast in my study: read the Epistles to Timothy and Titus…: and each prayed twice… . Our chief design was to implore a revival of the power of godliness in our own souls, in our churches, and in the church at large.” What a beautiful picture of friendship rooted in a love for Jesus. These men spent significant time praying, fasting, and laboring alongside one another.
This network of friends in the NPBA did indeed change the world.
On Oct. 2, 1792, the NPBA founded the first modern mission society, what would come to be known as the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS). The aim of the BMS was “to evangelize the poor, dark, idolatrous heathen, by sending missionaries into different parts of the world, where the glorious gospel of Christ is not at present published, to preach the glad tidings of salvation by the blood of the Lamb,” according to the Baptist Annual Register by John Rippon D.D. for 1790-1792 and part of 1793, found on page 371.
William Carey would go on to be the first missionary of the BMS, but he knew he needed his NPBA and BMS friends to maintain lifelong support to help him succeed. Andrew Fuller, co-founder of the BMS, summarized:
Our undertaking to India really appeared to me on its commencement, to be somewhat like a few men who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating into a deep mine which had never before been explored. We had no one to guide us and, while we were thus deliberating, Carey … said, ‘Well, I will go down, if you will hold the rope.’ But before he went down…, he, as it seemed to me, took an oath from each of us, at the mouth of the pit, to this effect — that while we lived, we should never let go the rope.
The founding of the BMS through these relationships helped to spark the modern missionary movement, fundamentally changing the world over the last 225+ years for the sake of Christ.
Your Relationships Can Change the World, Too
I find myself somewhat cynical when a church planting prospectus lists out that there are a quarter of a million people in a certain area. No one individual, no one church can reach all the people that need the gospel of Jesus Christ in almost any particular area. But the good news is that both individual and church-to-church relationships can change the world for Christ.
We all have a role to play. Maybe you are the ear, maybe your other friend is the foot, and maybe still another friend is the eye (1 Cor. 12:12–27). But each one is needed, sowing gospel seed in their areas of influence, trying to find good soil so that the Word can change people’s lives (Mark 4:1–20).
These relationships don’t always have to be in person. When Carey departed for India in late 1792, Fuller never saw him again. They maintained their friendship by letter for 23 years until Fuller died in 1815. But they so loved each other that even while separated by thousands of miles and without modern-day technology, they supported each other’s ministries.
I think of four good friends in my own church. Four young men who graduated college together, were members in our church together, trained for ministry together, and generally loved and supported one another. One is now with a church plant in Canada. One is moving across the world with the International Mission Board. Two are remaining at our church for now, maybe to be sent out and maybe to serve faithfully within our body for the rest of their lives. These four may never be in church together again, which honestly makes me tear up thinking about the impact they have all had on each other and our church, even at young ages. But those four relationships can change the world as they love, pray for, and support one another to help each other take the good news of the gospel to the lost and broken world all around them.
Invest in others! Bring your lost friends around your Christian friends (there is great power in evangelism within a community of friends — what Professor John Leonard calls “party evangelism” in his book Get Real: Sharing Your Everyday Faith Every Day). Live out the “one another” passages in Scripture.
Don’t feel like you have to change the world by yourself. Change it through the relationships you have within your church. Change it through supporting missionaries, not only financially but with emails, phone calls, text messages, FaceTimes, care packages, and personal visits. Help build relationships between your church and other churches. As the old adage goes, “We can accomplish more together than we can alone.” Let’s change the world through our relationships.
— Aaron Markham is one of the pastors at Ridgewood Church, Greer, S.C. He and his wife, Casey, have been married for nine years and have three children. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in North American Missiology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Read more of his work here.