Downward Mobility

I just want to be a Christian — a simple, radical, marginal, downwardly-mobile follower of Jesus. There’s nothing unique or spectacular about being a Jesus-follower. You just remember that God’s love is borderless. You just declare the Good News to the poor, as He taught us to do. And it all happens through relationships, not programs or organizations.   -- Dave Black

I guess 8 years on the mission field gives a person a better perspective on the problems of clinging affluence while trying to effectively live out the gospel. It is very very hard to do, and probably more than 99% of the people that try to do both end up letting go of either a life fully lived for Jesus or the comforts and securities that affluence provides. On the other hand, it’s easy for people to ignore the words of a missionary as someone who has “forgotten what it’s like in ‘the real world,’” or some nut that was called to suffer for Jesus.

Sometimes… most of the time, you can’t have it both ways. 

Recall the story of Nehemiah rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem in Nehemiah chapter 4. The wall was so important and so vital to be protected, that the construction workers carried swords in their belts as they worked. All those who carried supplies, did it with only one hand, so they could keep a weapon in another. During the building of the wall (52 days overall) they didn’t take their clothes off, not even to sleep and never put down their weapon, not even to drink water. That’s not a comfortable lifestyle, but it gave way to a glorious result.

What would you really be willing to trade of your comfort for the kingdom to advance?

Now a serious question…

Would you trade your car for a bible translation for an indigenous indian tribe of only 550 people? I dare you. I’ll help you do it if you’re interested.

Seventy-six Percent? Wow!

According to the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life, 76% of people in Louisiana say that they pray at least once a day. That’s pretty remarkable. It ranks Louisiana as the second most praying state, falling just one percentage point lower than Mississippi. Nationally 56% of people claim to pray daily.

You can read the state by state results for yourself.

There is something significant here. People in Louisiana appear to be overwhelmingly open to prayer. Even though nearly half of the Louisiana population (47%) does not attend religious services on a regular basis, more than three-quarters of Louisiana residents say they pray regularly.

Why shouldn’t prayer be a starting point in going beyond traditional outreach? Though people can be quite resistant to hearing a religious doctrinal presentation (which is essentially what a gospel presentation ends up being), they may be quite willing to have you pray for their needs and talk to God on their behalf. They may be open to praying together.

Prayer ought to be more effective too. Gospel presentations are instructions and a call to action.  Prayer is action. In prayer, one stands before God. Once you’ve done that, something is going to happen.

Back to blogging

For the past few weeks I’ve not been blogging. One reason is that my son spilt some water on our laptop and several keys have been working incorrectly or not at all. I went to see what a small usb keyboard would cost, but one that would be portable like the laptop was just out of our price range.

 

Today I downloaded a simple free program called keytweak that helped me remap the keyboard around the non-working keys. It worked wonderfully. So, I’ll be writing again in the next day or two.

 

God bless.

Who are we really trying to reach?

Here’s a list of names. Have you heard of any of these people?

Max Lucado
Beth Moore
Michael W Smith
John MacArthur
Charles Stanley
Andy Stanley
The Gaithers
TD Jakes
Michael Card
Chuck Swindoll
Sandi Patti
Kay Arthur
Philip Yancy

Now, would you be interested in seeing any of these people if they were going to be speaking or performing at in your neighborhood?  I’ve seen many churches hosting or sponsoring events with Christian “celebrities,” and treating the even as though it were the outreach event of the year. Churches sometimes confuse the popularity of these events with success.

There are two key problems with that kind of thinking. First, Knowing and belonging to Jesus goes way beyond being a fan of a Christian “celebrity.”   Second, the people who are attracted to events like these probably already fit into your social circle and culture. Going beyond outreach means going to people who don’t really know who these people are and don’t care if they are in town or not.

In the end, it doesn’t even matter what the “celebrities” have to offer. We have nothing to offer except Jesus, the love of God made flesh, shown to us and shown through us. Make it a point to target your outreach toward those who don’t know or relate to the famous Christians.

Why we must go beyond outreach

I grew up in a  church that was always scheduling evangelistic events. We had revivals, retreats, conferences, camps and door-to-door visitation blitzes. For several years our church was consistently among the top 3 churches in the state for baptisms. Our church was one of the first I’d ever heard of to launch a seeker driven service. In fact, it was simultaneous with the traditional service, but held in the gym. In the midst of all this, I was hearing God’s voice in my own life, calling me to a deeper walk with Him and to serve in ministry.

 

Years later, I returned to serve on staff at my home church. One day I pulled out an old church picture directory and noticed a graph on one of the first pages. It showed the numerical growth of the church by Sunday school attendance. Every year, this number was bigger, and impressively so, up until the last year in the graph 1984, the year the directory was printed. The number was familiar, I looked in our records, and it was the same average Sunday school attendance for the year 2000. I did some more research and noticed a pretty flat line from 1985 to 2000. Fifteen years of non-growth.

 

The late Eighties through the early Nineties were those “golden years” of baptisms for my church. There wasn’t a significant increase in membership nor Sunday school participation. How odd.

 

I had also been doing some demographic research for our single adult ministry. Out of curiosity, I pulled the data for our zip code and a couple of others and noticed during the late seventies and early eighties there was a significant boom in the population. Our part of the city was going through development. New neighborhoods were being build and businesses were opening. The church growth lined up with the growth of that part of the city. The tapering off of church growth also lined up with the tapering off of the growth of that part of the city.

 

How often does that happen? Probably more than we care to believe.

 

Something else bothers me about this. Our church was a leader in the state of Louisiana in baptisms, and during that time there was no significant growth in church membership. What does that say for the rest of the state?

Sermon - Jesus the Missionary

Sorry, this post was for another blog. Removing the URL.

 

God bless,

Stephen

Random Thoughts and Gleenings 1

ON OUTREACH

Anytime you enter into a relationship for any reason other than friendship or actual relationship, you are just writing down the eventual date that the relationship will end. True relationship has to be about just that.

If we don’t have a genuine love for other people, we have probably forfeited our right to evangelize them! – Dave Black

People are never going to believe that God loves them unless they experience that love through you. – William Lane

We must call sin “sin.” but we can’t say, “deal with this first, and then we’ll deal with you.” – Chris Seay

However strongly we may disapprove of homosexual practices, we have no liberty to dehumanize those who engage in them. – John Stott

If you want to effectively reach out to the poor, you should stop acting as though you are a savior. Stop acting like you're "helping" him or her.

Evangelization is a process of bringing the gospel to people where they are, not people where you would like them to be. When the gospel reaches a people where they are, their response to the gospel is the church in a new place. -Vincent Donovan

The most effective outreach is not winning the souls of lost individuals and bringing them into our church. It is bringing Jesus to the lost person and establishing a new church within his household and social network.