I just read an article in the Enrichment Journal by Ed Stetzer about the Future of the Church and its mission. The church in North America is in decline, though the church in the southern half of the globe is increasing. There are two things that jumped out at me in the article.
First, Stetzer places the blame for church decline on the trend that, "Christianity is repelling people from the church." This statement struck me.
How can the church that I chose to attend and love so much repel people? Here is what I am thinking. If church is a social club, or a list of rules (often broken by the members who claim to adhere to them) then people are repelled. People need to, and want to encounter God. People need to see and experience Jesus at church. They see Jesus when they see his love in us. They experience Jesus when they are contacted by the Holy Spirit. We must love people and pray that they experience Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit through worship, preaching and fellowship.
Second, Stetzer says we need to "regain the gospel." Our message is Jesus dying on the cross in our place and rising from the dead for our victory! Our message is not a self-help message. Our message is not simply a message of hope and optimism in each other. Our message is that Jesus Christ is God's Son and paid for my forgiveness on the cross. He offers us new life, eternal life!
What should you do? First, love people when they deserve it the least. Second, never back away from the gospel. People need Jesus. They need to choose him. Don't be afraid to tell people about Jesus. They will thank you for it later. If we love people unconditionally and hold out the gospel unswervingly God will use us to build his church.
2 comments:
I could not agree with you more. We always wanna give people a big list of rules to follow in order to serve God. But God wants us to share the "Good News" with the world. The Bible says that we will obey God if we love God. Yet we expect people to obey God before they even know God, much less love Him. Anyway. Good blog.
Thanks Dylan.
There are principals that God wants us to live by, but we have to stop using them as barriers to define us, and restrictors to limit acess. Those uses of "the rules" (principals to live and be blessed by) are not why they exist. Those purposes point to what we selfishly want, not what people need. People need love and access to God first!
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