My Realization

“Why do you only focus on the Church when you write your blogs? Doesn’t it seem bad on your part for critiquing the Church so harshly? Maybe you should focus your words towards the world and not towards the Church.”

I have been thinking about these words for a very long time, and to be honest I have found that my ministry, my preaching, and my conversations with other ministers tend to go towards this idea of critiquing the Church. This is not because I hate the idea of a church, but rather I have realized one thing: We can be doing a lot better. The part that makes me laugh at the conversations I have is that other pastors seem to agree with this realization.

The use of a captial “C” when I type Church is to recognize that this isn’t a one church body issue, but an issue that goes across the entire Church in whole, or at least from what I can see from here.

I feel as though we are failing in three major areas: Our teaching, our outreaching, and our preaching.

I have come to the realization that we as a Church are doing one of two things when it comes to our ministries, but very rarely do we see a church do both successfully. We as a church either tries to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in order to show the world that we are all sinners and need a savior, or we teach about how to be a better Christian. We very rarely see both used. We need to realize that as the Church we are to preach both sides of the story in an emphasis of balance. We are not only to see converts, but to see Christians rise in our church. It seems to me that we can be doing more here.

Another place where the Church is having a hard time is going outside the walls. Christians all across the States are so afraid of being killed in a time where people are attacking churches. My question is this, are we in any more persecution then the Apostles were? What I think is going on is the people in the church walls have been looking for a reason to stop reaching a community so they can just sit and be comfortable until the Lord comes back for them. This is a sad realization when you think that our job given to us by Christ is to go out and make disciples. We need to go back into a community that needs Jesus and realize that Christ has promised that He would never leave us nor forsake us. Maybe, we need to stop leaving Christ and forsaking the work He has placed in our hands.

Finally, the place that I think is the most important is we need to stop living by the creed of “They will know God because I live right.” In John 13:35 we see that the Christ spoke “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Many Christians find that this is the best way to reach other people for Chirst. “Oh if I live right maybe they will come and talk to me about Jesus.” This mindset is honestly bonkers to me. The passage above says that they will know that we are Christians, but never said others will come to know Christ. Our mission in Mark 16:15 is “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” We are supposed to use our voices and preach the Gospel.

Maybe we are too comfortable in our buildings. Maybe we are to focused on us and not the One who hung on the Cross. Maybe we need to refocus. I can tell you this: I will continue to state that we are not doing our best as Christians until we are giving it our all. My life verse is John 15:13 “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” We have a God who did that for us, but for some reason we are not doing that for God.

If you evaluate your church, and feel as though your church is doing the best it possibly can. I want to encourage you to keep going! Be an encouragement to other churches to do their best. Give it your all.