I have been thinking about church outreach recently. Outreach means different things to different people. What is considered standard outreach for a mega-church will be very different from what outreach looks like in a smaller congregation. Some things considered “outreach” make me uncomfortable. And, I am sure the things I consider acceptable might not be acceptable to others.
Here is my opinion: outreach is (or should I say should be) nothing more than letting people know who Jesus is and that the church is present. We shouldn’t make letting people know about the work of the church be too complicated. After all, the best outreach should be perfectly natural for believes anyway. We are call called to share. Sharing is outreach, essentially.
I’m just about done with teaching my What Did Jesus Teach Us to Obey class, which is based on the Matthew 28:18-20 directive and seeks to discover what, if any, part of the Torah the Jewish Messiah expected his Gentile disciples to obey.
Part of what the class has discovered is that there are a lot of responsibilities we believers have to God and to our fellow human beings. Usually, any “outreach” efforts by the church to non-believers emphasize the advantages of becoming a disciple of Jesus but don’t mention any of the responsibilities (helping the poor, loving a next door neighbor you might not even like, otherwise inconveniencing yourself because it’s the right thing to do according to God). If in reaching out to the rest of the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ, we told people not only their “rights” but their “responsibilities”, how many disciples would we gather?
Becoming a disciple is a lot like getting married. On your wedding day, despite all that you think you know about the person you are marrying, you haven’t a clue what married life is going to be like, especially over the long haul. In the old marriage vows people used to take in the presence of God, a man and a woman swore before their Creator and a room full of witnesses that they would “love, honor, and obey, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do them part.” The reason they took the vow was so, when those things actually happened (sickness, being poor, other marital problems), they would remember their vow, who they took their vow in front of, and not bail out of the marriage just because things got tough.
When we become a believer, it’s like that. Sure, God can’t get sick or have financial reverses, but our relationship as a believer can hit problems, difficulties, and adversities. Sometimes, it would be easier (in the short run) to bail on God and blend into the ways of the world. I wonder if people who become believers in the Jewish Messiah should take a vow to stick with him through thick and thin? Like your wedding day, the day you become a believer seems all rosy and full of promise. The rest of your life walking a path of faith and trust (they aren’t the same thing) isn’t going to be like that.
James,
I don’t know if you are aware of Ray Comfort and the ministry called Living Waters. He does a good job sharing that there are many false conversions simply because we are not sharing the full truth about the Gospel. Good stuff.
Michael
Nope. There’s a lot I’m not aware of. Thanks.
You might check out the Living Waters website. His approach to personal witness might be different than you would choose, but some of his sermons reflect the idea you presented earlier.
Michael