29 Jan Not About Entertaining
Why the the future of the church depends on healthy leaders, not on better attractions and entertainment.
I just returned from a ‘Missional Café.’ It is an annual event for church planters. I must confess that although it was great to connect with people, my mind and heart were in a different place… What good does it do to plant churches if there are no healthy leaders to shepherd them?
Many leaders were concerned with what they could do to attract people to their church. Fancy architecture…impressive bands…modern technology…mega buildings…programs for every need under the sun. I was surrounded by all of the markings of the great American success story, yet there was not a single discussion on the raising up of healthy leaders, much less on how to go about doing it.
In the midst of all of this, God kept pointing me to Isaiah 53:2. “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” So, what was it that attracted people to Christ? It was God in Him.
As I sat in that giant mega church with all its ‘attractions’, I thought, “What would happen if all of the ‘beauty and majesty’ were stripped from that place. Would there be anything to attract people to it? Would people walk through the doors? And if they did, would people meet God there? Or would there simply be an empty building void of any semblance of God?”
Fellowship is not about buildings or things of this world; it is about experiencing God through His people. We are the body of Christ, the temple of God, a royal priesthood. If we believe that, we will live that; and if we live that, we will draw people to Christ so that they too can join us at the banquet table.
The following item was included this week by Bob Hauselman in the newsletter of Apostolic Resource Ministries, attributed to Malcom Webber, and reproduced here with permission.
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