It’s plastered on all of their vehicles, containers and literature. Their executives have committed to it as a corporate mission and their people, from managers to drivers, from loaders to couriers, make it their daily objective. Simple and easy to understand, it defines their purpose. They have reduced everything they believe, everything they have and everything they do to this one statement. It is their gospel.
“The World On Time.” That’s it.
FedEx pledges to ship products from one point to another, anywhere in the world, at the precise time they agree to do it, or sooner. They dedicate all the resources of their vast assemblage of jets, trucks and distribution centers to this simple mission. Hordes of purple and orange uniformed associates scurry around our neighborhoods and crisscross the globe to get the job done. Clusters of corporate executives meet from early to late in far-flung office buildings devising ways to reach this singular goal more effectively.
Little else matters if they don’t deliver their packages on time. Failure means that their competition would soon overwhelm them, and customer disaffection would soon erode their client lists. If they don’t reach the world, then they are of no value to many of their clients who must have their good shipped to out-of-the-way places on the other side of the world. If they do reach the world, but don’t get there on time, they may as well forget it. Many products lose their value if they are not delivered at exact times.
In a way, it’s too bad that FedEx had to be the one to invent this statement. If anyone should commit to such a goal as, “The World On Time,” it ought to be the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. No product in the world surpasses His gospel in importance and urgency.
The World. Jesus, the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, did not shrink the scope of his mission to fit only his family, his nation or his race. Emanating from earth’s highest mountain, the waves of his redemptive blood surged ever outward in concentric circles until they included the most remote geographical areas of the planet, and offered salvation to the most unlikely and undeserving human beings among us. If, out of one blood, he made all the nations, then, through one blood, he wants to save all nations. So must our mission match his vision. If our founder’s vision embraced the world of the first century, who are we to impose limitations on the church’s mission twenty centuries later? Petty prejudices or myopic mentalities must not whittle the grand intentions of the Savior down to a fraction of their original design.
The church today must continually reassess and relentlessly pursue its purpose in global terms. Novel trends often seize our imaginations, and, before we know it, we charge off in some purely human direction. Personal agendas sabotage our ordained purpose. Multiple wants and perceived needs draw us into lesser missions. Many of these missions boast noble and attractive results, but they turn out to be mere distractions. After all is said and done, we still have a world to reach. Should FedEx proclaim a vision bigger than that of the church?
On Time. The best product in the world loses its potency if it arrives at its destination too late. While the church may eventually rise to their worldwide challenge, we cannot forget the expiring time. The importance of the gospel lies not only in the efficacious blood of Jesus, but also in the urgency of the need. In John 4:35, Jesus said, “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” We have a world of people to reach—-now! Jesus himself set forth this time constraint, and we dare not dismiss it as irrelevant. Notwithstanding the claims of the predestination doctrine, the denial of the historicists, the whitewashing of the multicultural movement or the abdication of post-modern Christianity, the church still has an urgency driving its mission. If we don’t get there on time, others with a lesser gospel will. If we don’t get there on time, even the greatest message in the world cannot save a single soul. A too late gospel equals no gospel at all.
We must commit the resources of the church to reaching this simple goal. Our worldwide network of ministers and people, churches and districts, ministries and programs need to work to make it happen. No objective or mission we presently own eclipses this one in importance—-today, or ever. In the world of package delivery, FedEx may reach The World On Time. In the world of propagating the true gospel, it is the church that must answer the call.