Help needed: Hard questions from the inbox
April 12, 2007 by John Baw
My inbox is normally a benign environment, hosting “Faith Fodder.” Stuff that I delight in: “Revival Fire” network emails of powerful testimonies, Fresh Fire Ministries Teaching of the week, you get the picture.
Inbox nirvana is no longer. I have someone asking hard questions at the moment regarding our church:
- I feel that the worship is too long and is starting to become as an obligation to certain people, rather than worshiping out of love for our father.
- I also believe that what is done on Sunday is starting to become a bit of a tradition and rather predictable.
- We need new wine skins
- Your message is great. And is getting very interesting. Is it catered for non-believers? What would they think if they came to church? Would they understand what you’re saying without even knowing the basics?
- There are people who need to hear the good news.
Ouch! But it is a good ouch! This raises quite a few issues:
1. We have a L O N G time of worship. It is not uncommon to have more than an hour of worship before getting into testimonies by others, open pulpit time (We do this weekly) and a message/word by myself.
Many times there is such a freedom in worship and the Spirit is doing so much that I would hate to just curtail the times of worship in order to cater to visitors or new Christians who may not appreciate such a long time of praise and worship. And yes, like in any place sometimes the worship is off the hook (!) and other times it is not as anointed – but I guess that happens at every church (right?). I have also observed that no matter how anointed and glorious the worship may be, some people just don’t seem to get in on what God is doing and are just looking at their watches (Not refering to the guy that is asking the questions here).
2. Sundays can be predictable in a sense. I mean, normally there will be worship, a message, an offering will be taken etc. I guess the crucial question here would be whether the King is among us (?). The presence of Jesus may be the determining factor here.
3. I do accept that my message is catered to believers in that I do preach to build them up, feed them, connect them to their purpose and destiny in Christ and then release them to be who they are called to be OUTSIDE THE CHURCH. Also, in a small church setting like ours I will flow with what the Lord leads in the moment and be extra careful to clarify and explain things in more detail should I see that we have visitors or un-churched people with us for that service.
4. Our greatest weakness at the moment is outreach (Rather, the lack of it) and I am seeking God desperately in order to have Him give me instructions and keys for this city and region that urgently needs HIM.
Lord, thank you for those that ask the hard, gut-wrenching questions and are used to help keep my feet on the ground, even if my heart is in the clouds.
And you, what are your thoughts on these points?
Technorati Tags: Outreach, Living Waters, Gibraltar
no offense to the certain people, but the church shouldn’t cut the worship time because their hearts aren’t right about it. If taken to the extreme of not having worship at all, it would be pretty clear that the hearts of those people must change and not the period of worship. Sometimes our worship is longer than other times. I enjoy the fact that it isn’t supposed to be a certain amount of time and that if it needs to keep going there will just not be a sermon so that worship can continue.
You could do the same thing each and every week for years and have it not become “just tradition”. I think that tradition can be good (the Presence of God coming during worship each week). We have a tradition of reciting an offering reading each week. I have it memorized just as I used to have the apostle’s creed memorized in my traditional church background (there’s that word again!) but unlike the creed that I would read almost without paying attention, this offering reading I am not bored with but rather am excited about each week and was dissappointed when we didn’t recite it a few weeks ago. So although I don’t think things need to change all the time, they could change sometimes if nobody is interested in them anymore and doesn’t want to change their heart’s attitude about it.
I hear this question more and more. As a believer who is trying to live a supernatural lifestyle I am thankful for sermons that are stretching to everyone in the room. A friend of mine in the school will often lead people to Christ at a restaurant and them bring them to church. Not that we shouldn’t help pre-Christians with the sermon, but realistically how many would you be preaching to? I struggled with this thought when doing an outreach at a university. I would preach an evangelistic message if there were new people there, but nobody new showed up the first night so I just talked about Kingdom stuff. Granted, the purpose of those meetings were to bring people into that ministry. So, I suppose the proper question might be what is the purpose of your Sunday meetings? If your purpose is to strengthen the body it sounds like you are on the right track, but if it is to attract pre-Christians then you might need to change things if attracting them is your biggest priority.
Yep. Outreach. On Tuesday our pastor that is in charge of deploying students to churches said that one of the main things churches are looking for in someone from Bethel is someone that can lead their church in doing outreach.
@David: Your comments are awesome!
>Worship issue: I’m completely tracking with you on this one. Sometimes I sort of think that if worship seems too long for some folk then its OK for them to come to church 30 mins late rather than cutting the worship itself. I also accept that I need to “read” the church better sometimes - I have a tendency to get lost in worship when I should also look at where the church is at on any particular Sunday, and maybe wind the worship down if I feel that it is dragging for the majority of the ones there.
>Tradition: Totally with you on traditions. I think what we need to avoid is religion rather than tradition. I hope to leave a legacy of REVIVAL in this place that will be a beautiful “tradition” that gets passed-on to other generations. 2 Thes. 2:15 actually tells us to hold fast to the traditions that were handed down to us!
>Preaching: The purpose of our Sunday meetings is to equip and release the Body to be who they are called to be OUTSIDE of the church. I have a burning passion to see Monday-through-Saturday Christianity on the move here! So Sundays for me is a good time to equip and train people with a Kingdom message.
>Outreach: Regarding outreach, in Gibraltar much has been done, from street preaching to house-to-house and I am perfectly OK with all of it, except that I do not want to slog-away at ‘programs’ that have not had much impact in the past. I am all for going after the power of the Holy Spirit and seeing the Kingdom invade this region. What particular form that takes in terms of outreach I do not know, the problem is that I find that as I am going after God, there is a huge tendency to get isolated from the same world Jesus called us to be a light to.
mmmmmmm still chewing on that one.
Cool to hear that God is stirring things up in your heart, I hope that someday I have the chance to come visit you and your church family over there, I would love to just talk about your school and hear what your experiences have been like.
I actually really like what David said above in regards to the worship issue, I know that sometimes I have found myself asking a lot of those same questions thinking that there is something “wrong” with my church and trying to figure out what “they” need to change, often times, I get in with God and find out there was something in my heart. Once that changes, all the sudden the church becomes healthy again! Obviusly, it was never their fault, it was me trying to externalize, or blame, someone else for issues going on in my heart.
Just keep loving bro, its all you can do (harder then it sounds)
In regards to the outreach stuff, thats interesting, I actually feel the exact same way that you do, I have a huge heart to see God’s kingdom break through in Seattle but have no clue how to go about it, I don’t just want to do programs, I want to see people get touched and encounter a real and living God. I’ll be praying with you about this and if I figure something out I’ll drop you a line, be sure to keep us all posted on what you learn as well.
blessings from Seattle
@Jeremy: Thanks for your input. You rock! That has happened to me also so often, although I must stress in this case this guy has his heart in the right place but has a genuine concern- he is expressing a very valid point
Regarding outreach - lets go for it!