Tuesday, February 08, 2011
So What Do You Do?
MMI:
If my church is not effectively spreading the good news of Jesus, I am going to assume it is becasue my church has not sufficiently appropriated that good news itself.
Think about this for just a minute - how hard to companies work to sell things you have to have? Not very hard really - advertising for meat for example is to say "My meat is better than his," but not, "you really need to buy meat." But products we do not need much - like another television, they work very hard to sell to us - new innovations, improvements to make our current TV look like it is not enough.
People need Jesus, so why do we have to work so hard to sell Him? I think because people cannot find the product here.
Think about it.
Greg Stier has a gripe with many churches: their mission statement is a lie.Boy is that something I can relate to - I feel like the church lies all the time. When we preach love, but practice cliquishness and traffic in gossip - we lie. When we preach sexual purity, but are constantly rocked by sexual scandal, we lie. I could go on - this and so much more makes our witness ineffective and our God look like a phony. But is that what this post is about? No
Greg continues: "If we are proclaiming to the members of our congregation and community that evangelism is a primary purpose via our church’s mission statement and we are not making it a central priority of our church’s program and budgets then that mission statement is a lie."That bothers me - what solution is offered? - "Have you been equipped by your church to effectively share your faith and is someone in your church holding you accountable to do it...How many resources (time, talent and treasure) are being deployed by your church to mobilize God’s people for personal evangelism?...How much effort is being put into training teenagers and children to share their faith since they are most open to the gospel demographically?" That creates a picture for me a church that is working very hard to propagate "the lie" of gossipy love and scandalous purity.
If my church is not effectively spreading the good news of Jesus, I am going to assume it is becasue my church has not sufficiently appropriated that good news itself.
Think about this for just a minute - how hard to companies work to sell things you have to have? Not very hard really - advertising for meat for example is to say "My meat is better than his," but not, "you really need to buy meat." But products we do not need much - like another television, they work very hard to sell to us - new innovations, improvements to make our current TV look like it is not enough.
People need Jesus, so why do we have to work so hard to sell Him? I think because people cannot find the product here.
Think about it.
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