Evangelism

Is Church for Believers Only?

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Reading an intriguing post about Ted Haggard and his return to the role of pastor triggered a long-held belief of mine:

Church is meant for believers only.

When I consider the state of the American Church, I’ve got to think that our emphasis on encouragingSainte-Chapelle church stained glass lost people to come to our church meetings has only succeeded in diluting our ultimate effectiveness. As it is said: The good is often the enemy of the best.

The early Church model was to send believers out, beyond the doors of the assembly. They shared Christ out in the streets. When the lost outside responded to the message and became believers, they were brought into the church assembly proper.

Today, though, we have believers bringing the lost into the church assembly with the hopes that the church leaders will convert them.

I believe this is a grave error for the following reasons:

1. All teaching and preaching within the church ends up dumbed down. Whether intentional or not, the tendency is to preach and teach to the lowest common denominator—which in this case are the lost. This robs the believers of their opportunity to “go to the next level.”

2. The church remains in justification mode and never moves into sanctification mode, so long-term discipleship suffers. Momentum for mission is lost when unbelievers in the seats cause problems within the church assembly, especially if they have been attending a long time and remain steadfast in their unwillingness to repent and come to Christ. They drain resources that may best be spent elsewhere.

3. The believers in the seats can punt their need to understand the salvation process and how to present the Gospel to others, instead relying on their leaders to do that work through the Sunday meeting. This robs everyone of growth and aborts one of the major bedrock gains of the Protestant Reformation: the priesthood of all believers.

I see this time and again, yet the modern model remains.

What if we made it known that our church was meant for believers only ? How would it change the way we function, grow, and meet the needs of the lost?

“Wise People” Program

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I was blessed to be asked by Jim Norman to talk on cultivating genuine discipleship and evangelism for his “Wise People” program on KDKR radio in Dallas/Ft. Worth. My conversation with Jim will comprise two half- hour shows. These are tentatively set for 8:30 a.m. CDT Saturdays on July 10 and 17, though I’ll firm up those dates for you as further info comes in. I’ll also provide links so folks can listen to the streams.

I thank God for this opportunity to share many of the concepts I’ve discussed with you here at Cerulean Sanctum. We packed a lot of great ideas into those two shows, I believe. People should be challenged, and the Lord will be lifted up. Many thanks for your prayers, as I definitely felt them!

He’s So Earthly Minded…

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Yeah, I bungled the beginning of the old aphorism.

It’s supposed to read like this:

He’s so heavenly minded, he’s no earthly good.

I think it would be interesting to meet someone who embodies that aphorism—at least the first half of it.

If you’re a reader of Christian blogs, tweets, and Facebook postings, then you are well aware of the great theological debate that is occupying most of our attention: Kindle or iPad.

It’s an important debate, not because of which tech gizmo ultimately triumphs but because we seem to be more enamored of tech devices than we are of fulfilling the Great Commission.

What greater squandering of the Internet can there be than failing to use it to stoke conversation about fixing the Church, then using that conversation to develop a meaningful, countercultural vision for this Christian life?

Seriously, aren’t we being assaulted on all sides? Isn’t the age we’re in increasingly squeezing the life and focus out of the Church? Haven’t we become a nation of Christians more interested in raising up politicians than raising up Jesus? Aren’t we more concerned about becoming poor than meeting the needs of the poor? Yet at the same time, don’t we go spending whatever limited money we think we may have on junk that doesn’t matter?

I recently read The Survivor’s Club, which details how people should and should not act when faced with dire, dangerous situations. House afireThe author examined many disasters, large and small, and noted a major failing among those who perished. Many people who should have survived the disaster did not because they treated the situation as if it were business as usual. In other words, their sense of danger failed to kick in. They didn’t process what was happening to them as if it were extraordinary. So they fell back into patterns of normal living, blind to the depth of the threat that faced them.

Here’s the kicker: That blindness is the majority reaction. Here’s the kicker to the kicker: ANYONE is capable of experiencing that blindness, even the trained.

Even the trained.

Folks, we’re supposed to be the trained. Have we been blinded?

I want to know where the serious people are, don’t you? Because when the house is on fire, it’s not enough to be trained; we have to be serious. And debating the Kindle vs. iPad isn’t serious. It’s just another in a long line of distractions that is increasingly making us Western Christians so earthly minded that we’re no heavenly good.