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.

Under Orders from the King

We were buying a house—a brand new house. It was about to be built just up the hill from the model home. Tina’s (my wife) mom came to visit; of course, we took her to see the lot and the model home. We were young; in fact, I was young enough to think that we would do a quick walk through of the model and then go to lunch. Can you tell I had not been married very long? Somehow Tina produced a tape measurer and she and her mother began measuring all the windows and sliding glass doors so they could get started picking out, and/or making curtains, drapes, etc. They were talking about colors and accents, and all the stuff I didn’t care about. So I sat down on one of the couches in the living room and watched the other people who came in to look the model over.

As I sat there enjoying the couch and listening to my stomach begin to growl for lunch, a man, probably old enough to be my father, sat heavily in the easy chair next to me. He was a talkative guy. At times I have been accused of enjoying the sound of my voice too, so we got into a conversation. Apparently, his daughter was looking for a house. I excitedly told him we had already bought one and it would soon be under construction. When we exhausted that line of conversation and our women-folk hadn’t reappeared, he asked me what I did for a living. I was in my very first lead, actually solo, pastoral assignment, so I excitedly told him that I was the pastor of Church of the Foothills, gave him directions, and invited him to join us any Sunday morning for worship.

He asked me what kind of church it was. I told him what I always say when people ask me that:  “We are a non-denominational church affiliated with the Church of God of Anderson, Indiana. It’s sort of a non-denominational denomination.” He said, “Just so long as it’s not one of the those evangelical churches.” I asked him what church he belonged to. He said, “I’m Jewish.” So I asked him what was wrong with “evangelical” churches, and told him that our church could be considered evangelical. He went into a rant for several minutes about how his daughter had been going to an evangelical church and they wanted her to become a Christian, and why couldn’t we just let people be what they were born to be. At the end of his monologue, he was pretty red in the face and he asked me if I tried to get people to become Christians. I told him I did, and he asked why I thought I should try to get people to believe as I do. After a minute or two he again stopped talking and I told him that the last thing Jesus did on this earth was tell His followers to go into all the world and make disciples. I told the man, we have to try to persuade people to join us. We believe God’s Son ordered us to do so. He huffed a time or two and then got up to go find his family. Tina and her mom came back and said they were ready to go about then and we left. I never saw that man again, but that conversation has stayed with me.

We are under orders to bring the world to Jesus. Doing the Great Commission is not something we can do when we get around to it. It is what the Lord calls all of us to do. Some people will laugh at you. Some will get angry. Some will avoid you. But some will believe. Praise God, some will believe! The proper way to share the Good News about Jesus is by building relationships with people who don’t know Him and sharing our lives with them. It is more than can be done in a few minutes on a doorstep … or in a model home. It’s about loving folks who need the Good News and earning the right to be heard. I didn’t have the opportunity to do that with the man on the couch that day, but I think someone was building that kind of relationship with his daughter. I hope at some time someone came into that man’s life and got to share with him on a deeper level than I had the opportunity to do. He was very resistant to me and, I think, to anyone at that time, but maybe later someone got the opportunity to help him know our Savior.

It’s a big job that Jesus gave us. If we do it right it changes lives, cultures, and history. It has done so in the past, and it can again. In recent months several things have happened that demonstrate that the influence of Judeo-Christian values has lessened on our society. That needs to change, but it won’t be changed by winning elections and passing legislation. If the change comes, it will be because hearts have turned to God. That only happens as we build relationships with neighbors, colleagues, teammates, whoever we do life with who don’t know Christ. It only happens when we risk being ostracized and even hated. It will only happen when people see Christ’s love in us. Remember, we are under orders. Jesus did His part on the cross. The Holy Spirit will help us. We must do our assignment.

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?

I Saw A Giant

Now, those of you who know me have probably noticed that I am a pretty big guy.  I am not NBA tall, but I tend to be kind of obvious in a crowd.  Well the other day I saw a real giant.  Not a physical giant, but a spiritual giant is.

I am a kind of interim pastor filling in for our lead pastor, Rev. Earl Wheatley, as he battles pancreatic cancer.  A couple of weeks ago I preached a message in preparation for National Back to Church Sunday.  I talked about some of the ways that the church turns people off.  Particularly, I talked about how we tend to put people in categories and we are often seen as judgmental.  I closed by challenging the people to strive to be known for loving their neighbors, co-workers, and others who don’t know Christ. 

At the close of the service I invited people to come forward to pray at the altar rail for people they know that need a relationship with Christ; for ways they might show Christ’s love for them; and for openings to invite them to join us in worship.  The Spirit was moving among us and many people came to pray for their own attitudes, and/or people they might be able to reach out to.

The first person at the altar rail was the pastor I am subbing for.  He felt well enough to be in worship that day and sat on the front row with his wife.  The following Tuesday he was scheduled to undergo some tests that would tell what progress the cancer was making and if the very uncomfortable chemotherapy treatments were helping.  Right away, I figured Pastor Earl wanted us to pray for him and about the test results he would get that week.  I moved over to join him, but before I got there I could hear him praying.  To my surprise, he wasn’t praying about the tests, or his pain, or his cancer.  He was praying for people in his neighborhood that need to know Jesus, and asking God for guidance in how he could best approach them.  Of course, I agreed with him in prayer.

After his wife helped him back to his seat.  I just sat down on the steps to the platform.  I have to admit I was stunned.  Here was a man in a fight for his life and his prayer was for his unsaved neighbors.  I was in awe.

When everyone had finished praying and returned to their seats, I said to the congregation while still sitting on the steps, “I want to be Earl Wheatley when I grow up.”  Then I told them of Earl’s prayer.  We have a giant among us.  His body is emaciated, but his spirit is huge.  I am proud to know him, call him friend, and know him as a brother in Christ.  He challenges me to put the first thing first.  Call it what you want: making disciples, filling up heaven, or seeing people saved.  It is all about sharing the love of Christ.  It is this love that gives a man like Earl the sweet assurance of his own salvation and the deep desire for others to experience it too.  I want to be like that.  How about you?

Making Disciples is What the Church is All About

The last words of Jesus that Matthew records are a command to His followers to make disciples:
“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 28:19-20, NIV).

Yet, is that the first priority of your church? Is it your first priority in regard to your involvement in the church? If it is not your priority, it’s probably not your church’s priority, no matter what the mission or purpose statement says. I think this scripture, along with Luke’s last words of Christ from Acts 1:8 indicate that everything that the church is and does should be targeted at making disciples. I’m afraid our churches do a lot of things that have very little to do with making disciples. Some traditional church programs probably began as means to bring people to a saving relationship with Jesus and help them grow in that relationship, but as the years have gone by the programs have become an end in themselves. Churches also are victims of what the military calls “mission creep.” By that, I mean the church starts with the very simple mission God gave it, but other things get added. For some, the unspoken mission becomes protecting the building, or reaching only a certain kind of people, or preserving the past, or even putting on a show.

Don’t get me wrong. I am amazed at how much many people do for their church. People give generously of their time. I applaud their efforts, but some of them work very hard at church doing things that don’t have anything to do with what Jesus said was the main thing. What do you do at church? Does it contribute to making disciples? Make a list of the ministries, programs and activities of your church. Are there any that don’t contribute to making disciples? Then why is the church doing them? Often the answer is, “Because we’ve always done it.” Churches are not very good at stopping things. Old programs that no longer make disciples need to be stopped to make room for new more effective ones.

There are a lot of churches that are declining. For many, the reason is that they have chosen to make other “churchy” things more important than making disciples. Christians get comfortable with churchy things and would rather do those things than do what is necessary to help people find Christ’s love and grow in it. A lot of churches are all for making disciples as long as they can do what they have always done. The truth is there is only so much time and so much money. If your church devotes only the time and money that is left after the church does all its churchy stuff to making disciples, it is probably not doing very much. Folks, Jesus said the point of the church is to make disciples. If that isn’t the point of your church, is it really a church?

Let Your Light Shine – How should Christians confront the world?

The other day at Wal-Mart I couldn‘t help overhearing this conversation:

First lady: “We have always home schooled, but she will be starting 6^th grade, so we are looking into a Christian school.  There is no way I am sending her to Woodstock Middle School.  I don’t want her in that place.”

Friend: “Really, I would think there would be a lot of opportunities there.”

First lady: “I just don’t want her around that influence.”

Just then, on the other side of me (where the mothers probably couldn’t hear the girls) I heard the friend’s daughter, “You aren’t going to be at Woodstock?”

First lady’s daughter replied in a tween girl’s haughty manner, “Of course, I don’t want to turn out bad like you.” (There was no smile or giggle.)

This conversation bothered me for several reasons. First of all, I hope that the daughters were friends and that the one girl was kidding, and the other one took it as that. (However, nothing in either of their expressions or body language demonstrated it.) That was disturbing, but I have been around middle school kids enough to know that such insulting talk is not an unusual thing to hear in that circle. 

What truly disturbed me that afternoon was the attitude of the “Christian” mother. She embodied v to me why the world is going to hell and the church is so ineffective in its efforts to change that. Now, I don’t know this particular lady, but the conversation I overheard reminded me of many people I have known in the past. At one time in my life, I might have been tempted to agree with her.  I might even have thought she was wise, but as I have grown older, I have come to a different understanding. 

Though churches are growing larger, the world gets no better and could be said to be getting worse.  Things that shocked my parents’ generation, and even some things that were shocking my “everything is all right as long as no one gets hurt” baby boom generation, are now considered normal parts of life. 

There is a strong temptation for Christians to seal ourselves, and our families, into a fortress where we are not confronted by the lost world.  That would be nice and I believe if we remain true we will be rewarded with the privilege of spending eternity in a place like that.  It is called heaven!  In the meantime, we have an assignment. It entails making disciples of all kinds of people--people of a different socio-economic stratum, opposing political views, and even those with lifestyles that run counter to our beliefs. Instead of meeting those folks on their turf and demonstrating the redeeming love of Jesus by the way we speak, live, and love, we do our best to separate ourselves from the very people God has assigned us to reach. Jesus’ teaching is that we are to be in the world, but not of it.  We must dare to be different in the world. It is not God’s plan for us to become a novel colony within the broader world, but to become salt and light to that world - salt that melts cold hard hearts and light that does a lot more than show them their error.  We are to be the light that leads them to the Savior.

Although I know that as I get older, I am considered more and more eccentric, I didn’t think I was old enough, or quite eccentric enough to get away with confronting that lady.  What I wish I had done is to start humming the old chorus, “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let it Shine” as I stood there.  This lady was not being light. She didn’t care about being light. She just wanted to be safe and comfortable. That desire to be safe and comfortable is thwarting the influence of the church and killing many congregations. Now, my problem is not with Christian schools or home schooling.  My problem is with the mind-set that limits the influence of Christians because the world makes us uncomfortable.  Now if the secular school they were discussing was literally physically dangerous, I would encourage her to seek a safer environment for her daughter, but I am pretty sure this particular school is not like that. Her daughter, and their family could have been the salt and light someone needed.  On second thought, given the daughter’s snotty statement to the other girl, it might be better for the Kingdom to keep her with Christians and away from sinners. I’ve changed my mind. Mom at Wal-mart, please don’t send your child to the public school. With the attitude you and she exhibit you would give Christians a bad name.

God bless you as you find ways to be salt and light in your corner of the world!