WHO ARE YOU MINISTERING TO?

Luke 5:27-32

Luk 5:27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. He said to him “Follow me,” .
Luk 5:28 And he got up and followed him, leaving everything behind.
Luk 5:29 Then Levi gave a big party in his house for Jesus, and there was a large group of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them.
Luk 5:30 But the Pharisees and their experts in the law complained to his disciples. This is what they said, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Luk 5:31 Jesus responded to them, “Those who are well don’t need a doctor, but those who have something wrong with them do.
Luk 5:32 I have not come to call the righteous ones, but to call those who have made mistakes to repentance.”

the other congregation

Jesus never treated the gathered worship of God’s people as optional or disposable. Week after week, He entered the synagogue, opened the Scriptures, and offered insight to anyone whose heart was willing to receive it. He honored that community even when it misunderstood Him, questioned Him, or quietly resisted Him. He did not walk away from them in frustration or disdain. He remained present. He remained faithful. He did not forsake that congregation.

But Jesus also understood that the kingdom of God could never be confined to one building, one gathering, or one kind of person. So He formed another congregation—one that met in unexpected places, like Levi’s house, around tables crowded with people who would never have been welcomed in the synagogue. Tax collectors, outsiders, the morally compromised, the socially invisible. Jesus stepped into their world not as a celebrity guest but as a physician making house calls. He knew that the people who felt farthest from God were often the ones most ready to hear His voice.

When the respectable religious crowd complained about His choice of company, Jesus didn’t retreat or apologize. He simply told the truth: a doctor goes where the sick are. A healer seeks out the broken. A Savior moves toward those who know they need saving. Luke, the physician-turned-evangelist, must have felt a special resonance with this moment. He understood the heart of a healer, and he understood why Jesus spent so much time with those who were spiritually wounded.

This rhythm—faithful presence in the gathered community and intentional presence among the lost—is still the pattern Jesus sets for His followers. We gather to worship, to learn, to be shaped by Scripture and community. But we also go. We step into the homes, workplaces, and everyday spaces of people who would never walk into a church on their own. We listen to their stories, share meals, build trust, and create room for grace to take root. We don’t wait for the broken to find us. We carry the hope of Jesus to them.

The question is not whether we belong to a congregation. It is whether we belong to two. Whether we are willing to follow Jesus into the places where the hurting live, the lonely gather, and the forgotten wait. That is where repentance begins. That is where grace becomes visible. That is where the kingdom grows.

LORD, show us how to connect with the lost and broken, to call them to repentance.