It’s time to evaluate your church.
Love is good, and everyone wants a loving church. However, loving the wrong things leads you the wrong way. Loving what is good, including our context, Jesus’ mission and the next generation (to name a few things) moves the church in the right direction. The church should be always reforming, that is, humbly looking at itself and assessing its ability to reach people with the good news of Jesus. Sadly, many of the people Jesus devoted His time to would not feel welcome in our churches.
What about your church outreach? What does your church’s posture, behavior, practices and activities communicate to your community? I think all of us want to understand the culture and community we are ministering in so we can communicate the gospel with absolute clarity. To do this, we need to ask ourselves the hard but needed questions.
- Who are we reaching?
- Are we primarily reaching people who are like us?
- Are we primarily reaching people who are already believers?
- Are we primarily reaching people who understand Christian subculture and taboos?
- What about the people who don’t have a church background?
- What about the people who are unfamiliar with Christian beliefs?
- What about the people who don’t understand church subculture and behavioral taboos?
To say we are unable to reach the lost because of our traditions or preferences is simply unacceptable and antithetical to the mission of God.
