Hi Mark,

To respond to a couple of specific issues:

1. Luke 19.10 says that Jesus came to seek & save what was lost. It doesn't say that he didn't come for other reasons. In other contexts (e.g. Mt 5.17; Mk 1.38-39; Jn 9.39; 10.10) he says other things about why he came. All of them are true - Jesus had a multi-faceted mission.

2. In Philippians 1.20-24 Paul said that he would rather depart and be with Christ, but that it was better "for you" (1.24) that he remain, where "you" refers to the recipients of the letter: "all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons" (1.1b). So Paul in that particular case is saying that his work for the church was actually what was keeping him on earth. (If Paul's only ministry was to testify to the gospel of God's grace, one wonders why so much of our New Testament is taken up with his instructions to churches, about issues other than evangelism.)

I'm sure i could go on to make similar points about #3. But more generally, i think what you are doing is trying to redefine something very broad as something rather narrow. What about the passages which indicate that God's plan was to set apart a people for himself (e.g. Titus 2.14)? What about worship? Is the church's call to worship only for the goal of evangelism? Was Paul's instruction that the Philippians be like-minded (Php 2.1-4) only for the purpose of making them more effective at reaching unbelievers?

My point is that evangelism is extremely important, commendable, and scriptural, but defining the church's mission as purely evangelism (or saying that the church universal must prioritise unbelievers before believers) is reductionistic. Even Rick Warren's 5 purposes, while useful, don't come close to covering the breadth of why the church exists. God is a big God, and he has a lot of purposes for the church that bring glory to him, and not all of them are ruthlessly prioritised towards unbelievers.

Your brother (for whom you've been working on this web site!),
Paul