The Second Coming of the Church

 All my life I‘ve heard people who were convinced that the time for the second coming of Christ was just around the corner. Today, with the turmoil in the world and the rejection of Judeo-Christian values by our society, that teaching is especially loud. Those teachers could be right. This might well be the time. I’ve even heard some folks say they wish Jesus would come now and put an end to all this tumult. I can understand their point, but we, the church, have a job to do, no matter what the circumstances are. We are still under orders to love God, love others, be witnesses to the love, hope, and salvation we have received from Him, and make disciples of people from the world over and from all walks of life. 

Perhaps, instead of wishing and praying for the second coming of Jesus right now to bail us out of this wicked world and to punish the wicked ones, we should be praying for a second coming of the church. Isn’t it time for the church to redouble its effort to accomplish the mission Jesus gave us before He ascended? I think the church needs to quit worrying about less important things like our comfort, Starbucks’ cups, worship styles, and our difference over the methods we use to share the Gospel message. Instead, we need to get on with being the church Jesus wants us to be.

I can hear some folks say, “But it’s so hard today. People don’t hold the church in high esteem and they don’t know the Bible. Besides that, our culture seems to be marching away from biblical principles as fast as it can.” My response to that is a very profound, “So what.” The church was born into the 1^st Century Roman world, which knew absolutely nothing about the church, nothing about Jesus or the Bible, and their culture was built on paganism and secular philosophy. This is precisely why what is needed now is a second coming of the church. The tiny band of Jesus’ followers ignited a complete cultural change. The church gathered so much influence in the relatively short time of 300 years that Emperor Constantine felt it necessary to declare Christianity the religion of Rome to keep his army together. Remember that the church was able to do that in a day without mass communication, without the printing press, without the computer, without air travel or powered sea and land travel. By simply relying on the yielded lives of Christ’s followers and the power of the Holy Spirit the church spread the Word through the entire Roman world and far beyond. Just imagine what the Holy Spirit can do today through Christ-followers who are fully yielded to Him and have access to all the communication and transportation tools of the 21^st Century.

Could such a “Second Coming of the Church” happen? Could a New Great Awakening come across our land and the entire world? Of course it could! Is that God’s will? I believe it is, because the Great Commission has never been rescinded! What I’m afraid is lacking is a church that is motivated to accomplish it. Jesus challenged His disciples with reaching every person with the Gospel and, finally, in this century, it is possible to answer that challenge. However, making disciples is more than simply telling the story. It’s helping people choose to believe and then learn to follow Jesus. The second coming of the church will not happen until the church turns its focus to fulfilling Jesus’ commands. Let’s quit fretting over minor things and make the main thing, making disciples, the main thing. To accomplish this He must be the main thing, not only in our church program, but also in the fabric of our everyday lives. I want to see the Second Coming of the Church.

Who are You Trying to Impress?

That was the question the conference leader asked a group of about 500 or so pastors and church leaders. “Who are you trying to impress?” I was a very young associate pastor and being a typical Baby Boomer know-it-all, I answered to myself, “I’m not trying to impress anyone. I just want to be me.” Then, the leader went further and said “Who would you most like to hear compliment your ministry? A friend? A parent? Another pastor? A seminary professor? Who would you most like to hear say good things about your preaching and your leadership?” Well that brought the question home to me. I thought I would love to have some of my old profs (I was about a year and a half out of seminary) tell me I was doing things the right way. This conference leader had started his church with nothing and led it to be, at that time, one of the fastest growing and most effective churches in America. He said, “I decided when I started that if I could get a compliment from anyone on my ministry, I wanted it to come from the unchurched in my town. That is who I decided to try to impress.”

To me, that was a brand new way of looking at ministry, and it has become the way I have tried to conduct myself as a pastor. Because Jesus’ command to us is to make disciples, I knew I needed to make an impression on those who don’t know Him. How else could I help influence them to join me in following Christ? This idea began to color the way I sought to preach, the programs and events I led my church to do, and even the kind of building we eventually built. Sometimes, it’s meant choosing to do things in a way that was not impressive to my profs or even the older leaders in my church. From time to time, those people made their disappointment with me very obvious. But the Lord did not assign me to impress them. Jesus had the same problem. Most of the religious people of His time were not impressed with Him at all, while the regular folks followed Him.

Impressing the unchurched does not mean becoming like the unchurched, but it does mean sharing the Gospel in ways that get their attention and speak to them. It means treating them with respect and loving them. It means doing your best to make them feel accepted, comfortable and loved in your presence. You won’t have to point out their sin (the Holy Spirit will take care of that), and it’s not your job to judge them (I believe that is reserved for Christ). Your job is to care about them and want them to join you on the journey to heaven.

Too often the practice of congregations does not match its rhetoric. They say they want to win people to Christ, but they leave the unchurched feeling like they are a bother. When people do decide to join the body, the congregation often keeps them on the fringe of the fellowship for a long time. (Right after becoming the pastor at a church, I heard some of the core people talking about the “new family.” Turned out the “new family” had been attending and giving to the church regularly for 5 years.)

Lesson for Pastor: It’s easy for your office to become an ivory tower. You can find yourself surrounded only by Christians and people who try to act like Christians when they are around you. Find ways to get to know unchurched people in your community and be Jesus to them. Join a service or hobby club, play on a ball team not sponsored by the church, volunteer as a police or fire chaplain, coach your kid’s sports team. Do anything that will put you in close contact with people you might be able to influence for Christ. Then, get to know them. Become friends. Share life with them and thereby earn the right to share Christ.

Lesson for Church Leaders: Help your pastor develop a culture in your church that expects and welcomes unchurched people. Realize that they will bring baggage with them from the world and be willing to help them deal with it when they’re ready. Don’t expect people who don’t know Christ to act like Him. Be real with them. You probably aren’t as Christ-like as you should be either. Share the road to Him with them.

My mentor, Dan Harman, used to say when I was his associate at First Church in Fresno, CA that he wanted there to be three kinds of people in Fresno: 1.) People who are members of First Church. 2.) People who are members of another church, but say, “If I didn’t have a church home I would go to First Church.” 3.) People who don’t go to church anywhere, but say, “If I decide to go to church, I think I’ll try First Church.” We didn’t get that far, but we worked at it. I challenge you to work at it too.

Think about it. From whom would you like to hear a compliment? Who are you trying to impress?

Should You Try to Grow Where You Are or Go Somewhere Else?

In my last post, I came down pretty hard on church people who complain that they are not growing in their church and use that as an excuse for leaving their church. I realize that the growth of many Christians really does stall. When that happens their church experience and even their relationship with Christ can become stale. Changing churches is awfully drastic. It disrupts your life, the church, and often damages the Kingdom of God.

Here are some things you can do to grow at the church you now attend.

o   Find out whom the pastor is targeting with his messages and pray with him for those people. Who does he see as the people who your particular church has the best opportunity to reach? Those folks are the primary mission of your church. Now that doesn’t mean that others are excluded. It means that those folks are the center of the target. There is a biblical precedence for “targeting.” Jesus targeted the “lost house of Israel”, but He also healed the Syro-Phoenician woman, and told he disciples to go to all people. Also, Paul targeted Gentiles, but also reached Jews. Conversely, Peter targeted Jews, but he was the first to baptize a Gentile (Cornelius). Pray that your pastor’s messages will touch the targeted people at a deep level.

o   Find out whom the songs target and pray for them. Also pray for the musicians that they will be able to keep the message and not the applause their priority. While you’re at it, ask God to help you enjoy the music more. If you don’t like it, or it is too loud, don’t complain to anyone except, perhaps, the music leader him/herself.

o   Look into the eyes of the people who visit the church and newer members. Ask God to help you love them even if they are different in generation, different socio-economic status, or education level.  Ask him to use you to be part of winning your neighborhood and the next generation

o   Find out what needs to be done and offer to help in anyway you can. Ask a staff leader where you might fit in and how you can get trained to do it.  Tell them you want to be on the team.

o   Whether not the staff can help you find an “official” job, you can still be part of accomplishing the mission. You can warmly greet others, especially visitors. You can invite new people to attend your small group, Sunday school class, etc. Even if they never come, they will appreciate a sincere invitation.

o   If you know that you need help to grow in the Lord, join or start a group or class that will go deeper in the study of the Bible. Ask the pastor or a staff leader for direction in this.

If you can’t be part of the team, do your church, the Lord, and your pastor a favor and find somewhere else to attend. However, before you do that think about how you will explain your leaving your church to the Lord. That’s a lot harder than explaining it to your pastor or someone at church, because God knows your heart. If your reasons are selfish He will know. If your reasons are valid you will know His approval. 

Before you write off the leadership of your church and/or decide to leave, ask yourself these questions:

1. If the church changed to suit me would it be more likely or less likely to reach           unchurched people?

            2. Am I a customer at my church or am I part of the work force?      

People complain about commercialism in the church and say church leaders work to impress the unchurched. Some of those same folks then choose to leave the church because the church doesn’t suit them. What they seem to want is for the church to treat them as customers. For the church to work as it should, church members should be part of the staff, not the customers. The customers of the church are people who need Jesus. When they put faith in Jesus, the process of customer becoming workers begins. The work people in God’s church are supposed to do is the great commission and the great commandments. 

I have actually heard people say that the church should cater to them, because they give money. Well that’s consumerism. Our gifts to the church are just that—gifts. Some folks give to the church the way they pay dues to a country club. They think their offerings buy them the right to be served by the church and use the facility, and that the church leadership should put the social and religious needs of its members first. On the contrary the church must put the spiritual needs of those who don’t know Christ ahead of the religio-cultural needs of the members. We should expect, even require, that our gifts to the church be used to build the Kingdom of God.

On the other hand, if the reason you don’t feel like your are growing is because the church is not reaching people, then you do need to find another place where you can be part of the doing the mission. You need a place where you grow by serving and supporting the vision to reach your community for Christ. You are not to be a spectator. You are to be a stakeholder. You are to be a servant. You are to be a minister and missionary!

If You’re Not Growing Where You’re Going …

I drove past the big billboard next to a large church on a freeway each week for 7 months and it bugged me every time. It said, “If You’re Not Growing Where You’re Going, Try Us.” I think churches should advertise, but I think it should be targeted. This sign is targeted, but it’s targeted toward people who are already church members. It seems to me we should be targeting the unchurched. Perhaps, this church is located in an area where everyone goes to church and their only opportunity to grow is to pick off disaffected members of other churches, but I seriously doubt that. Aside from the fact that it seems less than honorable to intentionally try to attract church people who are not satisfied with the church they attend, chances are that any one you get that way will, after a brief honeymoon, be dissatisfied with your church too. (And probably become a pain in the neck or even lower.)

Yet we hear that sentence all the time. “I’m just not being fed.” The question I always wanted to ask, and now that I am older, do ask from time to time is, “Why not? Why aren’t you being fed”?

Sometimes the answer is, “The pastor’s sermons are boring.” That might be true, but rather than leaving, this person should pray for his pastor and support any efforts he makes to improve.

Sometimes the answer is, “The pastor’s sermons are too simple.” Maybe his sermons are simple, but it may be his sermons are simple to you because they are targeted at new believers. Perhaps you find them simple because you need more challenging stuff. In that case, instead of complaining about simple sermons, you should pray for the people he hopes the sermons will reach, and ask him for guidance for ways you can go deeper. He would probably love to give you some direction.

Other times, the reason the person isn’t being fed is, “The music is not to my taste,” or “too loud”, or “for another generation”, “I don’t like all the tech stuff”, or simply, “I don’t know the songs.” Again, look at whom the church is trying to target. You might say, “Well, if I’m not part of the target, then I guess they don’t need me.” That is exactly wrong! The church needs you to be on the team, to be part of the effort to reach people who don’t know Christ. All of these criticisms imply that the church is supposed to revolve around you. It’s not! It exists to glorify God. We glorify Him by obeying Him, and He has told us how to do that: reach out to those who don’t know Him with His message of love, hope and salvation; to grow up to be like Him in our actions and attitudes; to grow together in love and fellowship; and to lift up those in need without expecting anything in return. Newsflash! The church does not exist for its members; it exists to bring the Gospel to others. Members of the church are supposed to grow up to take their places in helping make that happen.

Thom Rainer estimates that “we only reach one person for Christ each year for every 85 church members in the United States.” It’s time for all of us to be too busy to complain. Churches don’t need to compete for members. A church that seeks to grow because Christians transfer to it from other churches is not building the Kingdom of God. There are enough unchurched people in America to fill all our churches several times. Our competition is Satan, not the church down the block. Let us point our efforts at him.

If Church Growth is Not the Point, What Is?

Ok, I know the term church growth is out of style and that it really bothers some people in Christian leadership circles.  (I find that the ire it raises in church leaders is often directly proportional to the growth or lack of growth of the churches they have led.)  I also know that for some church growth has become all about numbers and dollars and making the pastor a star.  You can call it church growth, or you can say it is the church doing the mission, or being the church, or call it the missional church.  The point is to get more people to become disciples of Jesus Christ.  Just as healthy, normal human bodies grow, healthy, normal churches grow.  If the church is a group that truly cares about each other and worries that friends and neighbors are headed for hell, it will grow.  In fact, I think if a church lives up to Jesus’ purpose for it, it can’t help but grow.  Strip it all down to the most basic terms and you find that our assignment is to do the Great Commandments of loving God and loving others, and to fulfill the Great Commission to make disciples.  If a group is doing that, people will want to be a part of the fellowship. 

What bugs me are the lids that church people and even some church leaders put on the church.  These lids keep the church from being what God designed her to be.  Here are a few of the most popular lids.  You can probably add to the list:

We want to know everybody.

If your church has an attendance over 40 you don’t know everyone.  Besides if you know everyone the church has not been reaching out.

We want to grow spiritually.  It is not necessary for us to grow numerically. 

If you are growing spiritually you should be learning how desperately people need the Gospel. 

We need to keep traditions alive. 

Not if they get in the way of helping people find the love, hope and salvation Christ offers.

We might offend some people in the church. 

Apologize and refer them to the mission to save the lost.

We might offend some unbelievers. 

The Gospel often offends the people who need it the most.

I actually know of pastors who say they don’t want any more people because they don’t want to work that hard. 

Get another job.  Check your calling.  Maybe you shouldn’t be leading a church.

If we grow we will need to expand our building and that is expensive. 

First of all, there are alternatives.  Second, get over your fear and trust God to provide.

We might get new people who are not like us. 

Expand your horizon.  It was tough for the early Jewish Christians to accept Gentile believers.  Grow up.

The pastor won’t be able to give me as much attention. 

Grow up and let other members of the body minister to you.

If we grow someone might come to church that sings better than I do and he will get all the solos (or play piano, guitar, etc.)            

Listen to yourself.  When did the church become about you?

If we grow there will be new people in leadership and I won’t have as much control. Jesus should be in control anyway.  Why do you need to be in control?  Whose church is this?  Is it yours because you give a lot, or Jesus’ church because He paid for it with His blood?

If a church is going to grow, or become truly missional, or truly be the church, it will have to face up to these lids and find ways of removing them.  Hopefully, that means the people will have a change of heart and realize that it is more important for their neighbor to find Jesus than it is for them to have things their own way.  Unfortunately, too often the only ways those lids are removed is for certain people to leave in a huff.  Many church plants are started because the pastor discovered it was easier to start a church from scratch than to remove lids at an established church. 

All of us … from the church leader, to the seminary professor, to Joe and Mary pewsitter … need to look at ourselves.  Am I a lid?  Is my talk or my attitude keeping the church from building God’s Kingdom?  What scares me about the growth of my church, and why?  How does God want me to work to help other people become followers of Christ?