Last week I linked to a talk by Mark Dever on the church's relationship to the culture. If you haven't listened to the audio or read through the notes I encourage you do so. Dever makes a number of excellent points that deserve careful consideration.

One point in particular has occupied my thoughts since listening to the talk. In point #30 Dever states,

We must carefully consider the amount of our members’ time, vision, excitement and prayers we are encouraging to be occupied by actions non-Christians might do, when non-Christians will never be giving themselves to evangelizing our community (or beyond).

There's something the church is called to do that no one else will do for us: preach the gospel. Since no one else will engage in this activity we must guard against the subtle temptation to allow other noble, yet less important endeavors to occupy too much of our congregations' time and energy. The verbal proclamation of the gospel must be top priority. Faithfulness to our calling demands nothing less.