Nothing is what it used to be.
How is the church handling the current situation?
Are we cowering down and waiting for things to go back to normal?
or
Are we looking for opportunities to share Christ with a hurting, confused, angry, lonely depressed people, people without focus, without purpose and without hope?
Now is the time to re-evaluate everything we hold dear.
If we are born of an incorruptible seed, then its time for that seed to germinate and produce in us what its purpose is.
The question we should be asking is:
What is it going to take to reach your people group?
My community, my town or city, my ethnic group, my nation.
NOT: What can I can do?
NOT: What have others done before us?
NOT: What is possible?
No, the answers to all these questions limit our best possible outcomes to the extent of my current faith.
Jesus did not call us to go and live within the realms of our possibilities but our impossibilities.
He did not not ask us what we thought we could do, but commanded us, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel."
He came with a purpose, to establish the kingdom of God on earth and redeem mankind.
He commanded his followers to make disciples.
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28.18-20
It's time to get onto doing what Jesus commanded, instead of playing religious games and kidding ourselves that we are doing God's will.
Jesus said,
"Go ye, Disciple nations"
We have largely, stayed home and got fat.
Our thinking, for the most part, has been limited to growing a congregation in a building.
People want answers, people want hope, they want reality, they actually want what God offers them, the chance to live in the life of their original design, as God intended, but how will they find it? Most unbelievers would never step inside a church, so how will they hear the message of His love. How will they get to experience His love, and become a part of His family through becoming a new creation.
I was recently challenged greatly by the message of Chris Galanos from Experience Life Church in Lubbock Texas in his book "From Megachurch to Multiplication." After growing a conventional church to mega church status in under 8 years he started to question the way they were doing church, how valid were their goals and why was he not thinking like some of the missionaries their church supported and others, that were thinking in terms of how to reach an entire ethnic group, a state or even an entire nation.
While his church was lauded as one of the USA's fastest growing churches, and thinking in terms of thousands (they had already seen over 10,000 commitments to Christ) the people he was gleaning from were thinking in the millions.
Whatever you believe God has called you for, I believe it is time to rethink.
Rethink vision, rethink purpose, rethink goals, rethink strategies.
If we always do what we have always done, we will always get what we have always got.
If what the church has done in its efforts to reach the world over the last approx 1700 years has achieved its goal of winning the world and making disciples OF all nations - not just in all nations, (since the Roman Empire institutionalised the church) then we can go back to doing what we did before, but if it appears that the previous methods and strategies did not do as Jesus commanded then maybe its time to rethink.
E-Life church's journey towards movement, may not be for everybody, it will certainly challenge the status quo if you act on it, but at least it seems to be one church's attempt to answer the question "What is it going to take to reach your people group?"
ORDER From Megachurch to Multiplication
on Amazon here https://amzn.to/31pLknC
Howard brings a refreshing dynamic to understanding who you are in Christ and will help to lift your congregation or conference from where they are in their experience to where God says they are in His word. He is strongly word based, Spirit led and tangible healings and renewed relationships with the Lord are often experienced at his meetings.
https://www.facebook.com/howard.sands.5
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