What is Church Anyways? - Part 6
Ξ March 20th, 2006 | → 3 Comments | ∇ Theology |
Lets look at outreach now. It is true that one of our main purposes on earth as Christians is to fulfill The Great Commission and to worship God in all aspects of our lives. In fact, by the very act of fulfilling the great commission we are engaging in an act that honours and worships God. No matter how you cut it, outreach is huge.
Outreach can be done in many ways. There are some forms of outreach that are more effective than others. I personally find that a manipulative form of outreach is not helpful in the long run. If people are scared into a commitment to God, they may spend many years trying to come to terms with a loving God of whom they are afraid. This basically puts a persons ability/willingness to try and draw close to God on hold for sometimes a persons whole life.
I’m going to be focussing a little more on the evangelistic purposes of outreach in this series - or outreach that grows the church. This is not to say that outreach that is simply service to the non-chruch community is not important and valid. That kind of work is of great value.
In North America we often like to try and convince people of the reality of God instead of hoping and encouraging people to seek an encounter with Him. In fact there is some evidence to suggest that a logical belief in God might not have the same saving effect as a full belief of the heart. Take a look at Romans 10:9-10:
9That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
This suggests there are but two conditions of salvation. 1) The confession of the mouth that “Jesus is Lord” 2) The belief in your heart that God raised him from the dead. These are not an either/or thing either. It says “and”. They both are required.
A logical argument for God can not in itself cause a person to meet these two requirements. We might be able to pull out number 1, but number 2 is a heart thing and the fact of the matter is that we can really only influence our hearts, but not outright change them without some kind of encounter. Change is something that comes over time and is usually attached to some kind of emotional event, or in this case a spiritual event. Often spiritual events are in fact emotional.
Jesus taught a lot by example and by using proverbs which are in essence examples themselves. He did not try and convince people of the exsistance of God by a series of sound and logical arguments. He merely was himself and simply showed people who he was. This is one of the most effective ways of outreach. Our example in the world has a great impact on people.
I was once a salesmen at a music store. I set out to be a realiable and responsible salesman, so I decided that I would give my customers special treatment so as to win their trust and their future business. It was a successful strategy. At one point I had one of the other salesmen come up to me and say that he had been watching me serve my customers and had realized that there was an honest way of doing business that not that much harder than always taking short cuts. Basically he told me that I had inspired him to do his job better and to try and serve his customer with as much integrity and courtesy as possible.
In this case I didn’t have to teach how to do this. I simple did my thing according to some pricipals I decided to follow. It was seen by someone and without even really trying, I made a convert. I think the Christian life works in much the same way. People watch other people. You are being watched from time to time. Be honourable and responsible. Be Christ-like and make people wonder what it is you have that they don’t have. Eventually, this will start them seaching and eventually they will find the truth in Jesus Christ especially if they know that you are in fact a follower of Jesus.
What I’m trying to illustrate here is that outreach is not always best done in large groups at a Billy Graham crusade. Most of it should be happening on a one-on-one basis. Much of it doesn’t even need to be all that overt. It can be simply an example we are setting amongst people who we know don’t know Jesus. Once again, I feel that Sunday is not supposed to be our main outlet for outreach. It’s not the pastors job to reach all the people in the neighborhood, it’s our job to do that. Outreach should be a daily endeavour.
I think the danger of putting all our outreach eggs in the Sunday morning basket is that we start to hope that the church we are in will do that outreaching for us. We might muster up the courage to invite a friend, but in the end we don’t want to actually have to let the cat out of the bag about our own beliefs. Logically, you and your story are going to have FAR more meaning to one of your friends or acquaintances than that of your pastor.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think there is a place for outreach ministry on Sunday mornings. The problem comes when that ministry become a crutch to us and we treat it as out main outreach tool in our own lives. This goes hand in hand with using church as our main source of prayer time and worship time. We need to be engaged in all these things far more frequently than once a week.
What about small groups? Well in some ways I think people are more willing to engage with God and encounter him if they were invited to a more intimate small group setting. However, these times with our small groups need to be structed based on 1 Corinthians 14 in my opinion. So if the Spirit were working in full steam and new comer arrived, what effect would that have? I think the point is that we need to be careful. Spiritual gifts can be scary to people who don’t understand them. We need to make a point of educating people on the gifts. If a new person is invited to a small group that regularly sees manifestations of the Holy Spirit, I think it would be important for someone to explain to that person what sometimes happens and the Biblical support for those things to be happening. I suppose the same would go for Sunday mornings where manifestations are likely to take place.
In writing this series, I’m starting to notice a pattern. I think we as a church (or possibly its just me) rely too heavily on our churches to do the work of the Kingdom for us. So we end up mandating much of the tough stuff to the church we go to so we don’t have to do it. Among other problems with this thinking, this also helps to perpetuate the problem of the Sunday service being used for too many purposes - in that it is trying to have something in it for everyone.
Revised (edited for grammar and content) March 21, 2006