In this modern day of instant communication it is interesting to watch the conversational trends regarding the church. Daily my facebook feed is inundated with blog posts about various “great concerns” in the church. Among these concerns are great and weighty matters such as how we are to greet guests without driving them away; how and what we sing; how long we are to preach; what kind of committee structure or team structure we should have; how we should or should not make announcements – the list is endless.
I suppose when Christ and His mission are no longer our primary focus, all these “grave” concerns fill our time. Observation of the church around the world informs me that where Christ is the primary focus of the church, His Great Commission will be the primary task. And where people love the Lord and are obedient to make disciples, they aren’t worrying about how to greet people – they are scrambling to disciple them. We cry out for the church to fulfill the Great Commission and then sit back and enable endless discussions about trivia in the church. I realize that to the church where Christ is not central and the Great Commission is not the primary task, all these other things become the “cause of the day, week, month or year!”
My own denomination does a lot of “peddling” regarding Christian interests. Afraid you are driving your guests away? For $49.00 they will tell you how to stop that. Even though they could list the 5 themes, 10 ideas, 12 ways to not drive them away on a single blog post, you will need to pay $49.00 to know. Or, we could just get busy loving Christ with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength – and our neighbor as ourselves. We could just get busy being in the Word of God, obeying it, and making disciples. The church that is seeing professions of faith every week and baptisms every Sunday and new member classes filled to overflowing and the evident work of the Holy Spirit powerfully present in the body is probably going to be able to say “hey” to guests. They are probably going to sing joyfully without getting all cranked up about their preferences. They are probably going to to be hungry to hear a Word from God no matter how long it takes. They are probably going to fill churches for prayer, and they actually do even fill stadiums at 5:00 am in the morning for prayer. These folks aren’t worrying about how to make an announcement!
We really need to beware of being concerned about everything but Christ. And we need to quit peddling ideas in the name of the Gospel!
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