WWJD?
Since so many Christians ask themselves this question, "What would Jesus do?", maybe we should start thinking about it in a different way. Caspar keeps asking Jim after every church service they attend, "Jim, is this what Jesus told you guys to do?
What Caspar is asking about is the immense amount of work and money that go into a single hour on Sunday morning. Did Jesus really want us to focus so much of our time and energy on one hour of the week?
No, he didn't. So, as Christians who want to live a Christian life all 7 days of the week, what do we do about it?
Instead of getting my thoughts on this today, since this is the last blog on Jim and Caspar go to Church, I am going to give you some of Jim's closing thoughts.
"Unless we're willing to remove the handles from the front doors of our churches and publicly say to outsiders, 'We don't care what you think,' the church must become more reflective and repentant about how outsiders perceive us...as long as we put "Everybody Welcome" on our church signs, we are the ones who need to change - not our guests.
Jesus gave us a mission. I don't remember reading anything in the Bible written to missing people telling them to 'go into all the church.' They don't have a mission to adjust to us; we have to adapt for them. It's called the Incarnation." (pg. 149)
So, maybe what we need to think about is not so much how to get people into our churches as how to get our people out of our churches and into the world.
CS
1 comments:
I think we need to remove the unwritten statements under the welcome sign - Everyone Welcome (if you think like, act like, look like, and worship like us). People these days in this post modern world want to be known and feel like they belong and are cared for before they will believe in Jesus. We all should have good friends who are not Christian. If you don't - go find some! Getting the people out of the church doesn't have to mean we all go serve the homeless meals under the bridge downtown (though some of us do that) - it can be as simple as inviting a neighbor over for coffee or dinner. Being a Christian is not about policy, polity or denominations. It's fundamentally about showing and sharing the love of Jesus to people we encounter. We ALL can be the salt and light to the world that doesn't know it's in darkness.
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