Pastors and church leaders tend to devote most of their time on working with and ministering among people who are already in church. The movers and shakers, the givers and tithers, the leaders and volunteers. While this should certainly be part of the pastor’s ministry functions, it shouldn’t be all. The pastor should also focus on outreach to the sick and the sinner, showing them the love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God.
This, of course, will mean that the pastor is less accessible to the church member, and the pastor will get criticism for this. In such situations, the pastor must remember that these are the complaints of generally healthy people who have a cold. They are complaining over a runny nose. Meanwhile, there are people out there with cancer and broken limbs who desperately need help.
Who do you want to spend most of your time and energy with? The ten people who already have eternal life and who know the basics of the faith so they can read the Bible and learn to follow Jesus on their own, or the ten people who are standing with one foot in hell, are wrapped in the chains of the devil, and are pleading and praying to God, if He is out there, to send help in their time of need?
Who needs you more?
Is being the church about the ten families who have been attending church forever, or about the ten families who will never set foot in church?
And if the church people complain that you are spending more time with the unchurched, here is the simple solution: invite them along.
Being the church is doing the work of the ministry, which includes emphasis on inside and outside, to the neglect of either. There are many neglected, untaught, and lonely souls both loosely and closely attached to a local church somewhere. The neglect is real. However, the local church needs to be exhorted to get out there amongst those who have never heard the good news. The reason that more persecution in this country is not seen or experienced is because we generally are not putting ourselves in harms way.
Great post!
Thanks Brandon.
I love reading obscure articles, including those on changes in social organizations. Many of these organizations, including religious organizations, have been experiencing declining interest in recent years. Many of these groups have found that attracting new membership is especially difficult. Keeping the organizations afloat often involves catering to (some might say pandering to) the established membership, especially those who complain the loudest and pay the bills.
Models from half a century or longer ago no longer work as well as they once did. I think of the 1998 movie “You’ve Got Mail” starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (a great movie). Meg’s character in the movie owns and runs a neighborhood bookshop, while Tom’s character is part of a family that is building a new mega bookstore around the corner. You don’t even have to see the movie to know what will happen to Meg’s bookshop. That was thirteen years ago. Today even the mega bookstores are going out of business because people are buying much of their media online.
Yet many churches are still building huge buildings and are attempting to use a model, albeit sometimes a bit tweaked, that seemed to work in the fifties, and perhaps in the seventies and eighties. The first decade of this century witnessed increased flight from small churches to the megas, but not many new believers. Concomitant with that has been an increasing flight of the faithful away from all Institutional models of the church.
Undoubtedly there will be an ongoing demand for the model which is the only model some have always known, and therefore have assumed is the one, only and correct model. But the masses are increasingly failing to come. We, the church, must “go” to them, where they are, in community. We must be the church in community, rather than try to entice the community to the church building.
My somewhat unflattering way of thinking: I can choose to be a caretaker in a fancy, expensive “nursing home” taking care of the needs of some people in their declining years(I have done that for far too long), or I can choose to take love and life to people in their homes, at the coffee shops, parks and everywhere else “where I find them”(which I am learning to do). I understand that my second option cuts out the bookshop owners and employees, those who build bookshops, provide janitorial services and all other manner of things. I would expect those people to object to such change and the loss of their livelihood if they insist on not changing.
Sam,
Every comment of yours could be a blog post! That is a great picture from “You’ve Got Mail” and also from the “Nursing Home.” I love it.
Yes, the church is to be a “going” community.