Inflate the world, not the church
I've been reading a book by Rick Bundschuh, who is the pastor of Kauai Christian Fellowship in Hawaii. Last night as I was reading the chapter, "Light Bearers, Grace Mongers, and Peddlers of Hope," I came across these words:
"We usually think in terms of getting people to come to us. 'If I can only get so and so to come to church,' we reason, 'then he will find the Lord'... The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that while it is a great thing to get those who are unsaved into church, it is equally important for the church to get out into the realm of the unsaved by doing something effective, meaningful, and personal. Or, in other words, rather than just inflate the church with people coming from the world, it is equally important to inflate the world with people coming from the church. We must make an impact for the gospel among people for whom coming to church would be the last stop on their list" (p. 136).
Of course Bundschuh is absolutely correct. I'm really concerned that our churches are growing larger and larger, but when we survey our congregations, we find that they simply came to our churches after leaving another. In other words, we're just shuffling sheep from one church to another.
Unfortunately, we really are not having much of an affect on the huge segment of our population who don't attend church anywhere. Our young adults service on Sunday nights, The Bridge, does a little better with this than most churches, but we're still not at the place that we need to be. I think we must discover new, innovative ways to inflate the world with actual, active followers of Christ, instead of always trying so hard to merely inflate our church, or in our case, our ministry.
Any ideas?
"We usually think in terms of getting people to come to us. 'If I can only get so and so to come to church,' we reason, 'then he will find the Lord'... The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that while it is a great thing to get those who are unsaved into church, it is equally important for the church to get out into the realm of the unsaved by doing something effective, meaningful, and personal. Or, in other words, rather than just inflate the church with people coming from the world, it is equally important to inflate the world with people coming from the church. We must make an impact for the gospel among people for whom coming to church would be the last stop on their list" (p. 136).
Of course Bundschuh is absolutely correct. I'm really concerned that our churches are growing larger and larger, but when we survey our congregations, we find that they simply came to our churches after leaving another. In other words, we're just shuffling sheep from one church to another.
Unfortunately, we really are not having much of an affect on the huge segment of our population who don't attend church anywhere. Our young adults service on Sunday nights, The Bridge, does a little better with this than most churches, but we're still not at the place that we need to be. I think we must discover new, innovative ways to inflate the world with actual, active followers of Christ, instead of always trying so hard to merely inflate our church, or in our case, our ministry.
Any ideas?
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