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On page 274 of The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard writes in regards to Jesus’ discourse in Matthew 7:13-27:

You enter this kingdom community, he first points out, by a narrow gate. That is, there is a correct way to enter, and not just any approach–the “wide way that leads to disaster”–will succeed (vv. 13-14)

He then goes on to say that those leaders that are to be trusted are the ones who actually learn to do what Jesus taught was best. That in calling Jesus Lord or doing great works in his name is simply not enough.

Willard contends it’s about hearing and obeying:

• “The one who hears him and does what he says accordingly builds the house of his or her life to be totally indestructible. The house is built upon a rock, not upon sand, where the winds of life will knock it down.”
• “The narrow gate is obedience–and the confidence in Jesus necessary to it”
• “The fruit of the good tree is obedience, which comes only from the kind of person we have come to be (the ‘inside’ of the tree) in his fellowship.”
• “Doing what he said, beginning from ‘believe on him whom God has sent,’ we step into the flow of God’s ways, we ‘enter the kingdom of the heavens.’”

Willard concludes that “in actually doing what Jesus knows to be best for us, we build a life that is absolutely indestructible, ‘on the Rock.’” The Rock of course being Christ.

The narrow gate is about doing the will of the Father and not about doctrinal correctness! For all of us that spend so much time studying and debating doctrine, do we sometimes disregard discipleship and living the life we are called to live so that others can see us as continuing to be learners of what Jesus taught, so that we may be trusted? Isn’t it really about being obedient to the Father, living in the grace of Christ’s sacrifice for all, as we give ourselves to him as an act of spiritual worship?

So many in leadership talk about how Seth Godin hits the mark every time. I’ve not really read much of his work, but I’ve got to say the new ebook he just uploaded is killing me! It’s really resonating with me in such a way that I want to die to my old self so much so that I can rise again in Christ and really see how I can apply these principles to a ministry that honors God. I’m starting to get excited about ministry and what God is revealing to me this week!

Here’s a link to the ebook…may it bless you even more than it has blessed me:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/TribesQA2.pdf

As I’ve been thinking more and more about leading a missional community through Revolution Church Sacramento next year, I’ve also had thoughts about video preaching as part of what we do. Coinciding with these thoughts was a blog post by Perry Noble that reinforced his position that video teaching honors God and connects with people.

When we did our first month of preview services to share our vision with the members of our mother church, it was video preaching for 3 weeks, with me preaching 1 week. We participated in the One Prayer with LifeChurch.tv which many of you know about already. I was so totally blown away by the quality of the preaching from Perry Noble and Steven Furtick that I was hooked. I mean, I think I can be a pretty funny guy, but usually I evoke a laugh or two during a message while Noble just raised the roof and kept it up the whole 30 minutes. The guy seems like he isn’t even trying, yet he causes us to fire on several emotions in just one message. All this and he wasn’t even in the building! How can a guy in South Carolina talking about eating big, buttery biscuits and people believing or not believing in the power of Christ connect so well with us here in California? I don’t know how or why, but I just know what I saw and how people responded and it was amazing and incredible. Pastor Furtick is another one of those guys that doesn’t seem like he is trying, yet he can convey passion about watching an ice cube in such a way that you never thought possible all through the power of Christ in his life and his love for seeing people hear the gospel and come to know the saving grace of Christ. I was teary-eyed during the last half of his message and again, he wasn’t even in the building!

Can a guy like Noble or Furtick cause things to be stirred up here in Sacramento through video preaching? I think they could. As Revolution Church Sacramento takes shape and launches next year, we are looking to connect with a younger generation for Saturday and/or Sunday evening service. Mostly singles and young couples. However, could we partner with a great visionary preacher like a Pastor Noble or Pastor Furtick (or a Craig Groeschel or Ed Young, Jr. or…) and provide a gathering for families on Sunday mornings and see the kingdom grow even more? Could being missional and putting our faith into practice and sharing the love of Christ with the world be the glue that binds us together, even though we have two different worship styles, with two different meeting times, and two different demographics? I’m beginning to think we could. I’m feeling like the work that needs to be done here in Sacramento is far greater than what I could do even on my best days, and that partnering with another ministry with someone that can lead the way through their preaching and teaching while we work to connect people into service could honor God hugely. Who says that multiple services on a weekend must be the same exact message with the same exact preacher every time?

Maybe this is just another one of those dreams too big for the moment or my abilities. Could be that my mind is wandering and this isn’t what my thoughts should be on these days. However, I just can’t help but feel like this is worth some prayer and discussion and seeing what God would have me do here. My preaching doesn’t really translate well to video, but I’ve seen others with the gift for it and know that it’s being used to make a big impact on people in awesome ways. Just consider me more than a little intrigued at this point.

I invite your prayers and thoughts on this.

Are you excited? Outreach magazine just published their compilation of the top 100 largest churches in America. While I’m glad that people are still gathering in masses to worship the one true God, I find myself scratching my head at why anyone would want to glorify the church in this manner.

The sad fact of the matter is that there are pastors out there that will inflate their attendance numbers so that they can run with the big boys. They are immersed in the numbers game. They seek to grow numerically in order to confirm their status within the kingdom of heaven. In the minds of many senior pastors is the misconception that a growing church is a healthy church.

However, when polled most senior pastors will say that they are not interested in numbers, but instead they desire to see many to come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. That’s a noble thing, but at the same time many encourage people that were previously baptized in a church already to come forward and be baptized in their church, thus inflating the numbers of salvations and diminishing the scripture in Romans 10:9 which clearly states:

That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

I guess contrary to the word, confessing once isn’t enough?

We are taught not to envy or covet, yet we see statistics like this glorifying the local church and putting them on a pedestal because of the number of attendees they draw. When health and numerical size are used as factors to determine “success” in the church, how can a pastor not want to seek credibility for what God is doing in their church in the same fashion? It can cause us to see our numbers diminish within the smaller church because people are flocking to the mega-church because the music is so professional or they have more technology and staff in their children’s ministry and then believe that God is working in the mega-church, but abandoning us in the smaller churches.

I believe that God is working through the mega-church model to see people come to honest professions of faith in the Lord, with transformed lives making a difference in their community as the result. My criticism isn’t on the mega-church, but it’s on the glorification of the mega-church. Look closely at the image above or click here to see the whole list of the top 100 largest churches. It’s not just the top 100 churches listed, but they are ranked in order from largest to smallest and there is also the name and photo of the senior pastor and in addition to that, there is even a link to books that some of the pastors have authored. Sorry, but this just brings the kind of attention to the pastor that rewards him for obtaining such high status on lists like this. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem like such a godly thing for pastors to be recognized in this way or worse yet, to see them strive for such notoriety.

As I write this, I think the thing that gets me most is the notion that it’s all about attendance and not about transformations and loving others. As many of you know, I’m excited about the missional church movement. Not only the missional church ethos, but of the nature of the missional church to be more organic and empowering others to lead and disciple communities based on visions God gives them to be pastors and ministers of the gospel. What about the missional church that honors God through the Greatest Commandment and the Great Commission and sees itself being reproduced throughout the city or the world? If a mother church grows to 200 in attendance and then starts reproducing itself by sending missionaries/pastors out to lead others and disciple them in the ways of Christ, only to see this repeating itself time and time again, isn’t this the way of the first century church? The mother church may ebb and flow and never break the 200 barrier by intention, yet be responsible for seeing 20,000 come to know Christ and carry on his mission through daughter churches and other ministries. Should they be off the radar screen or not viewed in as high a regard as the mega-church of 10,000 members that lands on the list of top 100 churches? I don’t think so. Is having a congregation of 12,000 meeting in one building a better definition of outreach than having groups of 1,000 people meeting in 12 different buildings? Again, I don’t think so.

We should not be working to receive our rewards here on earth. Pastors can say that who am I to write about this when God is the one sending people to their church and they are just doing their best to shepherd his people. Okay, I’m with you on that. However, what about the inverse of this? How about when your mega-church of 10,000 people and 40 staff members sees its attendance drop to 5,000 in less than a year. Do you believe that God has his hand in moving the sheep to another shepherd, or do you go into panic mode and start cutting programs and laying off people and doing all you can to figure out how to get your attendance numbers back up to justify the big building and church campus?

Church attendance numbers in no way portray the effectiveness of outreach or seeing people come to know Christ for the first time. They do not accurately reflect the health of a church, nor the genuine nature of those that gather. A mega-church of 10,000 in attendance on Sundays, but 90% of the congregation is from church hoppers is not deserving of being more highly regarded than a church of 50 that live the mission of Christ everyday, drawing in people that may take years of living in a community of faith before they actually take the step of faith to put their trust in Christ eternally.

[At this point I feel a disclaimer is in order. I'm not envious of the mega-church or their pastors. I have not had any negative experience from serving or attending in mega-churches.

I have a great respect for the calling and vision of every pastor on the top 100 list of largest churches!

Those that know of my work in the ministry know that I speak highly of Pastor Craig Groeschel and participated with LifeChurch.tv in their One Prayer campaign last July. I have read and been blessed by several books authored by Andy Stanley of North Point. I'm amazed at what it took to see Bill Hybels ask for a raw and unfiltered assessment of Willow Creek through surveying their members and then responding in revolutionary ways to change the course and direction of their ministry in order to see true discipleship and transformation occur.

I am encouraged when I see how the Reveal study that was done by Willow Creek is causing local churches to take a look at what they are doing and why they are doing it. When things like this surface not because of diminishing numbers, but because of lack of discipleship and mission it can only be a positive step that deserves recognition. Most of my friends within ministry are pastors of larger, non-denominational churches with seeker-sensitive services. I love and respect each of them and sometimes feel they are better-suited to ministry than I am because of the larger resources at their disposal and their big faith to serve and make a difference. Again, I'm not in opposition to the mega-church model. I just think we are flirting with danger and temptation when we in ministry and those in the media begin putting so much attention to only those with larger attendance numbers. Bottom line is that I love the church and I love God and I pray daily that the church will start working to be more unified and seeing the love of Christ personified in cities all over the world. I just believe that in our humility we should seek to have God get all the glory and for people to see Jesus and not be awestruck by the celebrity status that pastors are being encouraged to embrace. It's a dangerous thing and we've already seen the enemy take too many people out of their calling to see the gospel reach the ends of the earth.]

Church envy…is it godly?

Ron Edmondson posted about Spiritual highs and spiritual lows and it hit me where I was at in a way nothing else had all week. There have been so many ups and downs this year. A lot of time the up moments have been followed with a big swing down. As Pastor Ron shares in his blog:

It reminded me of a principle God has taught me over the years that is incredibly important for all believers to understand. After a period of spiritual highs there will most always be a period of spiritual lows.

It even happened to Jesus. Consider His baptism experience: As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.d (Mark 1:10-11) This was certainly a high point for Jesus.

What happened next? At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. (Mark 1:12-13)

I totally forgot about that passage from Mark 12! I’m not sure if I would consider myself being tempted by Satan, but I haven’t been in the mood to celebrate the many victories done in the name of the Lord this year. I can relate to being in the desert all alone. For the sake of others around me I need to find a way to be encouraged and show my faith and trust in God and let his peace and joy be my own. It’s been tough lately. I probably owe some people apologies as a result of it.

Having people around you that know your walk and can just listen and encourage is definitely going to be an important thing. Unfortunately for me, the friends I’ve known forever and that know me well aren’t Christian and can’t relate to my burdens and struggles. So for now, I just need to spend a lot of time in prayer and try to be at peace without getting too excited or too depressed. It’s not about me anyway, even though it can feel like it sometimes. In God I put my trust and believe that he knows my heart and my humility and that I’ll get through this season and coming out gold

From a strictly personal perspective, I wanted to share a little of my story. After reading a post from Daniel’s Random Platypus blog: “Why are Asian American church leaders so obsessed with multi-ethnic church?” I feel like the debate over multi-cultural or multi-ethnic churches is somewhat divisive in itself. So, I wanted to clarify a little bit. Apparently there is a perception that Asian-American church leaders have their own personal baggage and that is a motivating factor to the desire for multi-cultural, ethnically-diverse churches. The actual reasons that Daniel lists in his blog are:

1. Theology and hermeneutics
2. Ethnic church baggage
3. Identity issues

The only one I can even relate to here is theology, but only in a subcontext (used to confirm my position, but not the motivating factor for my position). For me the reason is simple. I live (and feel called to plant a church) in a community that is incredibly diverse. Here are the demographics for Rancho Cordova, CA from wikipedia:

As of the census^[7] of 2007, there were 59,060 people, 20,407 households, and 13,550 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 2,445.4 people per square mile (944.0/km²). There were 21,584 housing units at an average density of 958.6/sq mi (370.1/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 66.66% White, 11.34% African American, 0.95% Native American, 8.24% Asian, 0.54% Pacific Islander, 5.72% from other races, and 6.54% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12.90% of the population.

With only 66% of the population being Caucasian (note: this does not take into account immigrant groups like first generation Russian/Slavik/European people which have prominent neighborhoods within the community) it means that there are 34% of the people that are not. A portion of the other ethnic groups worship in segregated churches (African-American, Korean-American, Mexican-American), yet most of the second generation people of these ethnic groups do not worship anywhere. They just don’t feel like they fit in anywhere. With this much diversity, there is no single church within the city limits that I can think of that reaches out to all people effectively (not a criticism, merely an observation). Without exception (that I can think of it at this moment) there is no church in the community that has a white senior pastor and also has someone of color on the pastoral staff. Same is true for the churches of African-American congregants with a black senior pastor will not have a Caucasian or Asian pastor on that same staff. In essence, the white church remains white, the black church remains black, etc.

It’s interesting to note that as I sometimes enjoy eating Asian foods that I prepare, when I go to the local Asian supermarket, there are mostly Mexican men putting out produce and stocking shelves and that the majority of the patrons are Russian or Eastern European. No matter what day or time it seems to be like this. It used to be exclusively Korean cashiers, but these days there is a Russian girl, Indian girl, Korean guy, etc. The grocery store reflects ethnic and cultural diversity, yet I can’t think of one existing church that does.

What this breaks down to is this: It’s not about being multi-cultural per se, it’s about being a gathering of people from diverse backgrounds all living and working in community with each other, all welcome to worship or seek the Lord in His church. I don’t want to be known as the Japanese-American pastor that crossed cultural lines to develop a multi-cultural ministry. I want to be known as someone that has a heart and a calling to minister the gospel to a specific community with a missional mindset and action behind our faith. I want to be able to make my experiences and testimony relevant to someone that is hurting and far away from the Lord whether they are black, brown, mocha, yellow, pink, creamy banana smoothy, hazelnut cream or whatever skin color. I want to be able to speak to people in a loving and caring way regardless of whether they lost a job, got turned down at the college of their choice, can’t make ends meet financially, etc. because I’ve experienced all aspects of life with highs and lows. I want to be relevant to those outside of the church because I was outside of the church for the first 37 years of my life and most of the questions they have about God, religion, or church are the same ones I had and I am not better than they are because I profess faith in Christ and they do not.

You see, it’s not about some mission to reach every cultural and ethnic group in my community because segregated ministry is inherently evil. I’m not searching for some better way because I can’t relate to the ethno-centic church I was raised in or because I’m not “white” enough for Caucasians, yet not “yellow” enough for Asians. So, I have to disagree with the suggestions within Daniel’s post and argue against anyone that believes there is some underlying baggage that must be causing my desire to be outside of the Asian-American church.

In the end, if I am faithful to the calling I believe God put on my heart and this is the community I am supposed to minister to, then I am not in control of who the Lord sends and I cannot manipulate who I want to connect with us. If our church is 95% Asian in 3 years, so be it. If it ends up being 95% African-American, so be it. However, if it ends up being 66.66% white, 11.34& African-American, 8.24% Asian, and 12.9% Latin/Hispanic then I’m going to feel pretty confirmed in the vision I feel came from the Lord and I won’t refer to it as some multi-cultural formula, but instead it will truly be a church of the city. As I mentioned in Part 2, I don’t want to be viewed as a Japanese pastor leading a multi-cultural church, I instead want to be known as a visionary leader, faithful to God, His people, and His Word doing my small part to see the kingdom of heaven reign on earth with God getting all the glory and transformed lives promoting the love of Christ for all to see. This is my journey.

We must face our fears, mistrust, and ignorance and become a society of one. It is often said that Sundays are the most segregated time in America. I would tend to agree. As I watch the news on the Democratic National Convention and underlying question that is always looking my commentators is whether Obama as to overcome racism in 2008. Simply put, yes he does! Race and racism are still in existence today. However, if we try to drive racism by pointing out differences between black and white culture we are on shaky ground, yet when it comes to the church, I rarely hear anyone take issue with calling a predominantly African-American church in Atlanta, GA a black church or even talking about the black church as if it is its own denomination.

It’s not so mainstream in America, but there is such a thing as the Chinese, Korean, Japanese or more-generic Asian-American church.

Should American churches be black, Chinese, Mexican, Russian, etc.? I say yes, and no. Let me define my point:

1. For first generation immigrants that have a language barrier, yet want to be able to worship, there should be a church that exists to allow that to happen. If Russian-speaking immigrants can gather in the name of the Lord, then that is great!
2. Regardless of language or race inherently the second generation will want to assimilate into American culture and be taught English and encouraged to become Americans. Will this second generation want to stay in an ethnocentric church the rest of their lives? Their friends are diverse ethnically, their school is ethnically diverse, their workplace, etc. Why wouldn’t they want their church to be representative of their Monday-through-Saturday environment?

Looking at Jesus’ ministry on earth, we know that as a Jew he broke away from traditional custom to walk though Samaria on his way to Jerusalem. It is on a walk through Samaria that he encounters the woman at the well. The end result is that a wave of Christ followers came to know salvation even though they weren’t the chosen people of God (Jews). We also read testimony of Jesus being in the company of prostitutes, those with leprosy, and the much-hated tax collectors. Jesus didn’t care whether someone was of the “chosen” or not, because one of the primary things about his gospel was that anyone that believed in him was granted forgiveness of their sins and brought into the brotherhood of God’s people. Looking at the New Testament, most of it was written by the Apostle Paul, whom Jesus called to preach to the Gentiles (non-Jews). Greeks, Romans, Ethiopians, all would come to know the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ through Paul’s outreach. Paul gathered the Jews and Gentiles and assembled them into one church in the community. There were the Ephesian, Galatian, and Thessalonian churches with Jews and Gentiles in unity, not the Jewish Ephesian church, and the Greek Ephesian church on the other side of town, etc. One church, one God, one love for all.

With such examples from the Scripture, why do we so often choose to be segregated during worship? Why must we use Sundays to try and preserve our culture, when God calls us to him above everything else when we come before him in worship?

One argument I hear from some is that if God sends us an Asian-American congregation, then that is who we are to shepherd and minister to. Okay. The problem with this argument is the leader/visionary. I’ve heard (and experienced) that the church will generally take after the senior pastor. If the senior pastor is Caucasian, mid-40’s with a college degree, married and has 2.3 kids then people of similar makeup will be drawn to him/her because they can relate to each other equally. So, me being an Asian-American, it would make sense that I could attract those that have similar cultural backgrounds to me. Therefore, if as Asian-American pastor, I have to be intentional about attracting those that are different than me. Can I as an American cross cultural lines and connect with people that are Hispanic, African-American, Russian-American, etc.? If I can’t, then personally I believe I have a problem because Jesus doesn’t differentiate based on race and I should be doing the work of Jesus, not the work of myself. If the population at large still won’t accept me because I am not of their heritage, then I believe that empowering leaders within the church that represent diversity can help people overcome such personal issues. If I have an Asian-American leadership team and talk about my experiences growing up with racism and certain aspects of Japanese culture, then I am going to relate to Japanese-Americans almost exclusively. It just makes sense. However, if I preach and exemplify the gospel of Christ and do so to Hispanic, African-American, Russian-American people in my community and they see the love of Christ and not a Japanese-American, then they will be drawn in by Christ’s love and not because we are of identical cultures.

To be diverse, I have to agree with DJ Chuang’s position in his blog post and state that it does take being intentional. However, I don’t believe that this is some form of manipulation or relying on some system of diversity rather than trusting God to build his church. If God wants the church to be multi-cultural, then I believe the leadership, attitude, sermon illustrations, etc. must be ethnically/culturally/socio-economically diverse in order to facilitate this happening.

Imagine what it must be like for some Asian guy to invite an African-American unbeliever to his church only to find out that his African-American friend doesn’t fit in and isn’t really welcomed because he is not Asian. Is that the example we should be setting for unbelievers? Would Christ only want to see African-Americans saved in African-American churches? When Scripture states that Christ will return to claim his bride, do we really believe that we are to be a segregated bride seeking solace in our cultural customs rather seeking peace and joy in unity and love? Interesting complementary post to this from Laurence Tom titled, “Is your church more Chinese than Christian?“

We can only stop talking about racism when we start coming together and worshipping together with our community rather than just our cultural community. We can only stop talking about racism when we are viewed as light and love rather than black or white or brown or yellow. I believe the church is an important instrument in this process of change and that someone needs to not be afraid to be a little uncomfortable for the sake of seeing ignorance win in the battle of racism and prejudice. When we should be leading the charge for this in the church, we are the last to embrace this concept!

It’s amazing to me that through a simple question so much information can be found through study and research in order to confirm an answer. I was asked the following question by a Korean friend:

What should be our attitude toward multi-cultural church? Should we seek it out or just build a church without actively seeking it?

As someone that has way more experience on this subject than me, I contacted DJ Chuang and got some insight from him, which he posted on his blog to illicit feedback from others to help as well. Then I started finding that through following blog links that this is a subject discussed a lot within the Asian-American context. As an Asian-American, this interests me a great deal. It seems that there is quite a lot of debate on the issue of having segregated Asian churches in the US or whether we should strive to be an amalgamation of one body within one homogeneous church.

For me, I really feel more comfortable in a multi-cultural church. I want church to be about loving God and loving others and being in-service to my fellow man rather than being served. I feel like being in an ethnic church makes it more about one’s heritage rather than about serving others. In a Korean church, the context of the message is going to be presented in a way relevant to the culture of Korea. Food will cater to Korean taste buds. So, what if God sends a Mexican family to a Korean church? Well, maybe they will connect, but most-likely I think they will feel out of place. Even if they connect, the church is probably so inwardly focused on reaching other Koreans than unchurched Mexican, Caucasian, African-American, Argentinian (etc.) people with the saving grace of Christ for both the Jew and the Gentile, that they will miss out on connecting others to the church and subsequently to the gospel of Christ.

One thing that puts me up against a lot of others in ministry is that I believe church was never intended to be safe and comfortable. The minute it is, where do we need to seek Jesus? If the church is feeling all warm and fuzzy then why would they want to venture out and attract those unlike them to be a part of their community? Jesus called upon the disciples to be challenged and always learning and growing. They were put in situations so risky that at times their life was dependent on whether or not they would be willing to die for their faith in Christ. I don’t think we can truly comprehend this idea in modern-day America.

Looking at the church and it’s amazingly rapid growth under oppression and persecution, it causes me to wonder something. They are Chinese and don’t really have options to worship in multi-cultural churches, but if religious freedom came about, I’m wondering what would happen. As a country that just hosted 200+ nations for the Olympic Summer Games and is reaching out to the US, Middle East & Europe and adopting some of our cultures into their way of life, would they really want to be just a church to the Chinese?

If we are to expect the kingdom of heaven to reign here on earth, will there be ethnically separated churches on that day? Are their segregated streets with segregated worship spaces in heaven? I seriously doubt it! So, we might as well realize that Christ has only one bride and it has nothing to do with our birthplace or skin color. It has to do with our love and faith as we set out in the journey to follow Christ.

For more thoughts, some of which go against my thoughts in this post, take a look at:

• Churches should stay segregated: http://waynepark.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/churches-should-stay-segregated/
• I could write pages and pages on this: http://www.randplaty.com/2008/08/06/i-could-write-pages-and-pages-on-this/#more-223
• Does a multi-cultural church need to be intentional?: http://www.djchuang.com/2008/does-a-multiethnic-church-have-to-be-intentional/
• Asian-American churches…the wave of the future?: http://www.randplaty.com/2008/07/26/asian-american-churches-the-wave-of-the-future/
• In class today: Mosaic Church: http://nextgenerasianchurch.com/2007/10/16/in-class-today-mosaic-churches/#more-352
• Why many Amerians prefer their Sundays segregated: http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/why-many-americans-prefer-their-sundays-segregated/

Well, if you’re Tim Stevens, executive pastor at Grainger Community Church, you rejoice that there must be those in that group that are new believers or unbelievers.

When I first saw the stats of Grainger’s Reveal survey on Tim’s blog post it kind of threw me. Grainger is well-known for being a relevant church at the forefront of cutting edge stuff. They must be baptizing and discipling tons of people. Well, I’m sure they are, but in a church of 5,000 people on any given Sunday to know that they are attracting a lot of people to explore their faith is pretty great.

It just shows that different methods are being used to reach people and that God will be glorified through it all. People come to know Christ in different ways and their paths to the truth come about in various stages. One can’t expect that someone that wants to know the Lord personally may automatically believe the Bible to be fully true and without error or contradiction. For me though, I believe that engaging people in a missional environment where they have the chance to see lives changed through the power of the Holy Spirit will lead people to want to believe passionately that the Bible is relevant and truthful as they see things unfold in front of their eyes that mirror things they read in the gospel.

Whether missional or attractional, churches will still struggle with balancing what to do for both the believer and non-believer and it is open dialog such as what Tim Stevens is doing that will help us all obtain the goal of one day seeing the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Another post by Craig Groeschel on the Swerve blog calls pastors to preach the gospel every time. In his “10 ways to Make Your Spiritual Invitation Stronger” post, he lists these action steps:

1. Truly believe in the power of the gospel to change lives.
2. Recognize that not everyone is saved (including some people who have been members of your church for years).
3. Hate sin. Explain repentance. Preach Christ.
4. Don’t promise a better life. Promise a better eternity and the Holy Spirit to lead you through this life.
5. Preach as if this is someone’s only chance to hear about Christ. It might be.
6. Present the gospel in every message.
7. Call for a decision.
8. Trust that the Holy Spirit has already been at work in someone’s life.
9. Believe people will be saved.
10. Worship God when they are.

Isn’t it amazing that this is a call to pastors? Seriously, shouldn’t we all get this before we accept a call to preach? Well, we should, but we don’t always do this. In particular, I have been to services where decisions are never given. The messages are delivered specifically to those that believe in Christ already. Same with the gospel message. Many services have messages based on scripture on how to be a good parent or good steward of your finances or give money when times are tough to be blessed, yet they never touch on the gospel of Christ’s saving grace.

Another important point here is that I think a lot of pastors don’t really consider that they may have only one chance to connect with someone. God is infinite and he may use several people to call on someone to be saved, yet the road may stop with you. You may be the last hope of seeing someone come to know Christ. Is that reflected in your preaching?

One of the advantages of starting in youth ministry is relating to the statistic that 70% of teens that have been part of a church will leave and never come back once they go to college. That is 7 out of 10 students that will walk away from their faith and choose the world over the kingdom of heaven. If I know time is short, then I know I have take advantage of every opportunity. In the end, I am not perfect and I have failed at times. If I truly believe the gospel has the power to change lives, I must preach it every time for the sake of seeing one more person experience transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit.

If we can’t confirm through our own examples from the pulpit that the gospel as has the power to transform lives and that we trust the Holy Spirit has moved before us to soften hearts, how can we expect those in the seats to believe it and live it? Doesn’t the world deserve our best effort to preach the gospel and Christ crucified every time we speak? Are we to be agents of change in revolutionary ways to spread the love and gospel of Christ or should we resort to messages of having better lives for ourselves without repentance and belief that the gospel saves?

This is my act of obedience I must live by and hope that there is still time to see more lives eternally affected through the kingdom of heaven. Romans 1:16-17 will be on my devotional list this week and thanks (as always) to Pastor Craig Groeschel for challenging me and helping to strengthen my faith and ministry! May my ministry come to reflect what God put in my heart every Sunday, rather than what will cause people to like me or consider me to be a better preaching pastor. The transformation must start with me.