Church and Gospel stuff

Jesus was much more about going to where people are than getting them to come to Him. He was always “going”.

Imagine if Jesus were to come back to one of our churches today. I wonder how we would handle His ministry. If we followed our current strategies we would find a building – big enough and either churchy looking enough or “cool” enough to begin the invitation strategies. Then the billboards, yard signs, and mass mails would go up and out. Catchy slogans would tease with the benefits of coming to church. We would tell all our people to go and invite everyone to come…well not to come see Jesus…that doesn’t sell here so good anymore. But not to worry, we know people, and if we just capitalize on their own life improvement desires – better sex, better marriage, better children, better friends – then we can show them that Jesus is the way they get all that.

And Jesus says, “Then what?” “Well, we just wait for Sunday”.

There are several observations to make here.

· People doing this can have very good motives. There desire is to win the lost. But the methods don’t square with what God actually told us to do – “Go, make disciples”.

· This strategy is failing miserably to save America – Even among those who actually are successful at filling their church.

· The reason Jesus told us to “go” has more to do with the relational aspect of the gospel than the accumulation of bodies somewhere. It is in that one-on-one experience of you sharing Jesus and life with a lost person, that the good news of a God who loves them comes to life. Mass marketing strategies minus people sharing faith, depersonalize our message.

· Catering to a “benefit” driven society does not produce life transformation.

· That revolving door at church has a lot to do with the bait-and-switch people experience. There is never a billboard or mass mail including “how you can serve God”, “how you can give your money to help the Kingdom”.

· Could it be true that our greater motivation is to build our church and we are using Jesus as support material?

These are the kinds of things I have been evaluating at Woodland for some time now. It is the thinking  behind DontComeToOurChurch.com. So my criticisms are not for others any more than for myself. I am choosing to make some changes in all this. How about you?

When it all makes sense

As I am growing in this faith I have drawn the conclusion that one of the problems with most churches ministry and growth, including Woodland’s to this point, is…                                                                                                                                                    It all makes sense.

I mean really…we define our target audience and market well. We have all areas of church life and ministry down to a science and execute it with precision and committement. And it works. We become a church success. Everything about our success can be explained – hard work, committment, and good growth principles. We are no different than any other business.

The problem I find when I read the Bible, is that much if not most of the time there is some story being told with a critical element that makes you say, “Now that doesn’t make sense”. Things that science can’t test and reason can’t explain.

So what if we didn’t market at all? What if there were no sign outside? What if our only means of marketing was live people sharing their faith? Would the Church still grow?

I can hear it now? “If you don’t market, how will people know about your church?”

I know the answer…but you can’t see it.

DontComeToOurChurch leaves Woodland

We really didn’t anticipate this so much. It was a way for our Church to stop talking about Church and start sharing Christ. So we got shirts and signs. But what has happened in just three weeks is a growing response from other Churches saying, “Come share this message with us” and “Can we participate?” So we have met to make the shirts available online which should take only a few days to set up. Then anyone anywhere can order their shirts at DontCome… and start their own journey of inviting people to Christ not Church.

Believe me if you wear one of these shirts, you won’t have to generate one conversation about your faith – people will ask you to! You just have to be ready. I’m even hearing stories of first graders explaining DCTOC.com.

Oh yeah. And the couple of dollars that we make on each shirt, will always go straight to missions! We will not spend it on our Church. Promise.

The promise we will ask you to make:  I will wear my shirt but I will not use it to tell people where I go to church. I will use it to tell people about Jesus.

We know it will be hard to do, we are doing it to. We will be making videos and posting more blogs about ways to handle to conversation – it really is a challenge – to just share Jesus.

“gotta be a gimmick”

I spoke at Grace Baptist Church last night. I sure hope when I am in my 70’s I still am seeking to serve God as strong as Doug Harris.

After speaking on India and DontComeToOurChurch this guy came up and told this story:

“I can’t wait to get home and tell my college age son that I met the creators of DontCome…. He came home the other day and said, ‘I saw this sign and I just bet its another Church gimmick”. He went to the site and was searching. I kept asking him, ‘What church is it?’ and he kept saying, ‘I can’t tell, I don’t know’.”

That was just music to my ears. The site really is about Jesus. So I gave the dad a tshirt to take home to his son.