Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A collection of sayings sewn together

Sobering Thoughts About the Church  (this is not original with me. I lifted interesting sentences, quotes and thoughts out of their own contexts and just stitched them together into these paragraphs.)

 

We are not genuinely concerned about the lost. We invite them to increase our membership and coffers. It is not a question of how many worship in your church, but how many will be worshipping before His Throne. Jesus did not tell the Samaritans to worship in the Temple. He told them that they can worship in truth and spirit anywhere. A church that has no heart for the lost is truly lost.

 

You can make a joyful noise with the ninety-nine on Sunday, which does not make heaven rejoice, or you can go and rescue a lost soul and rejoice with the company of angels in heaven. The church stands guilty of misusing praise and worship… reducing worship to singing choruses ad nauseam. But the heart wrenching cries of the lost are drowned in all these religious decibels. Shouting “Glory, glory!” does not glorify Yahweh but bearing abundant fruit does (John 15:8,16).

 

Most Christians have yet to open their portfolio of saved souls. Many set secondary goals of reading more Bible or praying more, rather than the primary goal of birthing spiritual children. It is easy to evaluate yourself. If you are good soil, then you should be bringing forth thirty, sixty and even a hundredfold fruit.

 

A mature church is one, which transforms the lives of those outside the church. A farmer gathers the harvest in the granary, disposes it off as soon as he can and immediately gets busy preparing the harvest field for the next crop, otherwise the land will be run over by weeds. The modern church gathers one harvest and keeps it in the granary (church building) until it rots. It does not prepare the harvest field for the next crop. The sin of the modern Christianity is that it preaches to the preached, comforts the comforted, blesses the blessed, converts the converted, baptizes the baptized, sinfully neglects the neglected and selfishly spends 99% of the budget on herself.

 

A church without the Great Commission is a just a club. A fisherman is not evaluated on the basis of club activities or the number of sermons he delivers to the captive fish. A fisherman is evaluated on the basis of how many fresh fish he catches.

 

The church exists to intercede for the meanest rascals, where they can be transformed, equipped and sent out into the world as extraordinary channels of His grace to rescue other rogues and scoundrels and good for nothing people. (Ezek. 3:17-19; Rom. 11:25; Matt. 24:14) God told Jonah, “I am concerned about all the inhabitants of the city” because He does not want anyone to perish. You are out of sync with God’s vision if your vision is limited to the welfare of your family or your church. The Great Commission should be the signature tune of every church.

 

 

gleaned from Victor Choudhrie

4 comments:

  1. Makes me wonder if a church realy needs to be "constituted" - because it seems that is the death toll of a church body. It seems there are at least two schools of thought on that. I was recently urged to "constitute" a church very early in its conception. On the other hand, organic churches have niether leaders nor constitutions. Maybe we should just be itenerant preachers!

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  2. This Comment by Jamison May was Accidentally Deleted. (Sorry about that.) I am reposting it here.

    Makes me wonder if a church really needs to be "constituted" - because it seems that is the death toll of a church body. It seems there are at least two schools of thought on that. I was recently urged to "constitute" a church very early in its conception. On the other hand, organic churches have neither leaders nor constitutions. Maybe we should just be itinerant preachers!

    ReplyDelete
  3. If by constituted you mean incorporated or registered, then no, it doesn't. Members do, however need to have a commitment or agreement to obey Jesus together. That can be as simple as "We believe Jesus is who he said he is, and we agree to help one another follow all his commands."

    Incorporation and buying land can often stifle evangelism. This is a little counter intuitive, but the goal then becomes to evangelize until the building is full. Then the priority becomes maintenance and sometimes raising funds for and even bigger barn.

    By the way, in the Bible "to preach" doesn't mean give sermons, but announce the Good News. So, yes we should all be itinerant announcers of the Gospel.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Makes me wonder if a church realy needs to be "constituted" - because it seems that is the death toll of a church body. It seems there are at least two schools of thought on that. I was recently urged to "constitute" a church very early in its conception. On the other hand, organic churches have niether leaders nor constitutions. Maybe we should just be itenerant preachers!

    ReplyDelete

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