Redeeming Church Archives - Page 17 of 21

I recently heard (#AmazonAdLink) Bob Roberts make the following shocking statement:

“I think all Christians need to pray less. Instead, we need to just shut up and play ball.”

At first, I was shocked, because we so often hear that we need to pray more, and that the kingdom of God advances on our knees.

But then I got to thinking about it. I think that many of us substitute prayer for obedience. We need to pray less and obey more.

Pray vs. Obey?

We know what God wants us to do, but instead of obeying, we pray about it.

Every single one of knows that we are supposed to show love to our friends, coworkers, family members, and neighbors. But instead of actually doing that, most of us pray about it instead.

We say: “Dear God, please help my neighbor with his marital problems. Please help my coworker with her troubled kids. I’ve been praying so long for my father, God. Please do something.”

Does that prayer sound familiar?

Listen to the prayer time in your church this Sunday, or in the Bible Study you attend. I guarantee that in most of these prayer times, someone will pray that God will help the people in your community with their problems and struggles.

Then ask yourself, “What are we as a church, what am I as a Christian, actually doing about these needs ourselves?”

When we pray to God to help others, it is possible that God is “praying” for us to go help others?

How about when someone is hurting, or sick, or in financial need? Do you pray about it, or do you actually help them? What do you think God wants you to do?

Let Me Pray About It

I am constantly haunted by a conversation I witnessed about five years ago between a father and his son. (The father was a pastor, by the way.) I was working at a Bible camp, and we needed some staff for the following week. The son asked the father if he could stay and help out. The father answered, “I’ll pray about it” and walked away.

The son turned to me and said, “That means ‘No.'”

The son had his dad figured out. His dad was using prayer (and God) as a way to spiritualize his own decisions to not grant his son’s requests.

I wonder how often we treat the commands of God this way? Instead of just telling God “No” we tell him “I’ll pray about it.” Prayer, when used in such a way, is a spiritual way of stalling so we don’t have to obey God.

The next time you catch yourself saying (or writing) to someone, “I’ll pray for you” stop and ask yourself if there is something you can actually do for the person instead.

Do you want to pray like never before?

Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?

If you have these (and other) questions about prayer, let me send you some teaching and instruction about prayer to your email inbox. You will receive one or two per week, absolutely free. Fill out the form below to get started.

Membership-become-a-member

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,
Login here.

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to
Upgrade your Membership to one of the paid groups.

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:
Join Us Today.

Membership-become-a-member

Who is the Church Service for?

By Jeremy Myers

7 Comments

I recently asked the question, “Who is the Church service for?” The two basic answers are that the church service is for believers, or that it is for unbelievers. Some churches focus on teaching and training Christians, while others focus on reaching out to unbelieving seekers. Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses.

The Church Service in Teaching Churches

Teaching churches focus on training Christians, but do a relatively poor job of reaching the lost. They will often say that outreach and evangelism is the job of the individual Christian, and you will hear them say things like “Healthy sheep naturally reproduce.” But in reality, little evangelism actually takes place.

And as it turns out, though many of the believers in these churches know their Bibles well, few of them actually live out what they know in their day-to-day lives, nor are they reaching out with the gospel, which challenges the idea that these sorts of churches are actually doing a good job making disciples.

So teaching churches often fail at reaching out, and ultimately, fail at making disciples.

The Church Service in Seeker-Sensitive Churches

Seeker sensitive churches try to correct the weakness of teaching churches by making their church programs and services more welcoming to unbelievers. They seem to do a great job at this.

They often offer Saturday or weeknight services for the Christians to help them mature, or will encourage believers to get involved in home groups for discipleship.

But in reality, seeker sensitive churches often fail to bring new disciples to maturity.

Furthermore, it has become increasingly evident that although seeker sensitive churches do grow numerically, most of their growth is transfer growth from other churches, rather than actual evangelism growth. So in reality, unbelievers are really not being reached by seeker sensitive churches either. Seeker sensitive churches often fail at reaching out, and ultimately, fail at making disciples.

The Problem with Both Types of Church Services

The problem with both church models is the same: the church cannot focus primarily on training believers or primarily on reaching unbelievers. Both are needed. But even churches that try to do both are generally quite weak in one or the other. So who is the church service for – believers or unbelievers? The answer is: “Wrong question.”

The correct questions are “What is the church?” and “What is the church service?” We will look at these questions in future posts.

If you want to read more now, try two books I have written on these topics:

To answer the “What is the church?” question, I wrote Skeleton Church. There is now a free online course that goes along with the book. Join the discipleship area so you can take the course today.

To answer the “What is the church service?” question, I wrote Put Service Back into the Church Service.

Is the church service for believers or unbelievers?

By Jeremy Myers

11 Comments

One question I have been mulling over recently is “Who is the church service for — believers or unbelievers?”

There are some who believe the church service is primarily for believers, while others believe the church service is primarily for unbelievers. This belief reveals itself in different ways depending on how it is answered.

The Church Service is for Believers

Those who say that the church service is for believers will often have church services that cater to the needs and desires of Christians. There will be an emphasis on programs and teaching that meet the needs of Christians. The sermons will often center on teaching Christians what they need to know to be better Christians. The songs will often use terms and ideas that Christians are familiar with. The programming will center around issues that Christians are dealing with.

In the churches I have pastored, this is the approach I used. But we always did a poor job of reaching unbelievers, as do most churches who follow this model.

Unbelievers who visit a church that is focused on “making disciples of Christians” will often be confused and weirded out by what goes on. They will ask questions like:

What’s with all the teaching from Romans?
What does “justification” mean?
You say Jesus is coming back? That sounds a bit like the legends that say King Arthur is returning.
Why do I want to learn “Christian business principles”?
If I want to become a Christian, do I really have to be “washed in the blood of the lamb” and become “the bride of Jesus”? Both ideas give me the willies.

The Church Service is for Unbelievers

Then there are church leaders who say that the church service is primarily for unbelievers. In these church, the leadership understands that much of what the church does and says is a little strange to unbelievers, so they try to look at things from the perspective of an unbeliever, and make the church more “seeker sensitive.”

They gear the church service not toward the Christian, but toward the non-Christian who knows next to nothing about the Bible or church traditions. This tends to attract lots of crowds, and even generates lots of new believers, which is great, but ends up allowing most of these new believers to remain in relative immaturity. Bill Hybels and Willow Creek have recently announced this fact for their own church. The “seeker sensitive” model, while it attracts large crowds, does a poor job of bringing those crowds to spiritual maturity.

Is there a balance or middle ground between the two? I think there is, which we look at in the next post: “Who is the Church Service For?.”

Also, for more on this subject, check out my book, Put Service Back into the Church Service.

Wanted: Free Grace Church Planting – Part 2

By Jeremy Myers

3 Comments

The previous post talked about how there are lots of church planting networks, but many of them are opposed to Free Grace Theology.

The question could be asked why we even need new churches.

Why we Need New Churches

Many believe that there are already too many churches and it is better to revitalize and support existing churches rather than plant new ones.

Here are one way of explaining it (I pulled this from ThinkChristian.net):

1. There are 195 million non-churched people in America, making America one of the top four largest “unchurched” nations in the world.
2. In spite of the rise of mega-churches, no county in America has a greater church population than it did ten years ago.
3. During the last ten years, combined communicant membership of all Protestant denominations declined by 9.5 percent (4,498,242), while the national population increased by 11.4 percent (24,153,000).
4. Each year 3,500 to 4,000 churches close their doors forever; yet only as many as 1,500 new churches are started.
5. There are now nearly 60 percent fewer churches per 10,000 persons than in 1920.

In 1920 27 churches existed for every 10,000 Americans.

In 1950 17 churches existed for every 10,000 Americans.

In 1996 11 churches existed for every 10,000 Americans.

6. Today, of the approximately 350,000 churches in America, four out of five are either plateaued or declining.
7. American denomination recently found that 80% of its converts came to Christ in churches less than two years old.
8. Hence the claim of many leaders: “The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches” (Peter Wagner).

Just for fun, I found a quick map that gives a generalized picture of religious adherents in the US from 2000:

The map is from a page on Valparaiso University’s web site called American Ethnic Geography.

Population Growth is Outpacing Church Growth

There may be lots of churches today, but there are LOTS more people, and the number of churches per person is decreasing. Some might argue that this is because small churches are closing and the people are going to mega-churches, which is true. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that many mega-churches are not doing a better job than smaller churches of making disciples of the people who attend.

Most importantly, is that new church plants tend to be much more effective and efficient at reaching out to unbelievers. For this reason alone, we need to get involved in and excited about church planting.

Wanted: Free Grace Church Planting

By Jeremy Myers

12 Comments

I have a heart that beats for church planting…I’m just not sure I’m cut out to be a church planter! I mentioned it before, but I have become increasingly convinced that if Free Grace theology is going to move forward, we have to involved in church planting.

There are numerous organizations and networks which are planting hundreds of churches worldwide, and most of them are strongly Lordship/Calvinistic. We need one for Free Grace Theology! It’s not enough to just write and speak and debate. We need to get out there and share the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches.

Below are 10 of the top church planting organizations. Though for many of them I could not find a doctrinal statement, the ones that did have doctrinal statements leaned toward Calvinistic/Lordship theology.

1. Acts 29 – Calvinstic
2. New Thing Network – Lordship
3. Global Church Advancement – I can’t find a doctrinal statement
4. Leadership Network – I can’t find a doctrinal statement
5. Orchard Group – I can’t find a doctrinal statement
6. Stadia: New Church Strategies – I can’t find a doctrinal statement
7. Grace Church Planting Ministries – Lordship
8. house2house – I can’t find a doctrinal statement
9. Kairos – I can’t find a doctrinal statement
10. Association of Related Churches – I can’t find a doctrinal statement

If you are interested in church planting, or just doing things better at your church to reach out more effectively, many of these sites have excellent free tools and ideas. Make use of them.

What if I told you to Pray Less?

Pray vs. Obey?

Let Me Pray About It

Do you want to pray like never before?

Who is the Church Service for?

The Church Service in Teaching Churches

The Church Service in Seeker-Sensitive Churches

The Problem with Both Types of Church Services

Is the church service for believers or unbelievers?

The Church Service is for Believers

The Church Service is for Unbelievers

Wanted: Free Grace Church Planting – Part 2

Why we Need New Churches

Population Growth is Outpacing Church Growth

Wanted: Free Grace Church Planting

Theological Study Archives

Bible Study Archives

Advertise or Donate

Search (and you Shall Find)

Get Books by Jeremy Myers

Schedule Jeremy for an interview

Click here to Contact Me!