Ministry Blues

I'm a little bit down these days. I know that "Revivals" are supposed to elevate--revive--our spirits, but that hasn't been the case in the past few weeks. I've become depressed at the state of our churches and am wondering why we even bother with doing "church" the way that we are in the 21st century.

Our churches are more like clubs, We even have memberships! We haven't made them exclusive (not officially) and generally make membership simple (and meaningless) to attain, but we do gather in our safe little holy huddles and maintain a cloistered division between us and the communities that we live in.

We have set aside the command to make disciples and have contracted that duty to our vocational clergy. If the church isn't sharing the Gospel, it must be their fault. That's what we are paying them for. Unfortunately, according to the Bible, the job of the pastor/teacher/evangelist is to equip the followers of Jesus to share the Gospel with the world around us. I guess that we are not doing a very good job.

In fact, we seem to have complicated the Christian lifestyle beyond what we can manage on a day to day basis. We have program after program on sharing our faith. We move from the latest and greatest program to the new and improved latest and greatest program. When something seems to be working well for a period of time, we get tired of it and want something new--something different. Teaching programs has replaced teaching the commands of our Lord. We are very busy at doing nothing that has an eternal impact--but at least we're very busy. And while we work at our programs, people are going to hell.

It's not supposed to be this hard. The Jews had 613 Laws that they were to follow. Some were "do" laws. Some were "do not" laws. Jesus made it simple. When asked which of the laws was the greatest, Jesus said that the greatest law is to love God with everything that we have (Deut 6-5). Then He gave them a bonus--the second greatest law: Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). He said that the other 611 laws (as well as everything from the Prophets) are based on these two.

Jesus didn't leave us with a program to share our faith, He left us with a command to share our faith--no Share Jesus Without Fear; no FAITH; no Drawing the Net; no Monday night visitation programs--just a simple command to make disciples. Go make disciples--students. Teach them to obey the things that I've taught you. Don't worry, I'll be with you. (Matt 28:19-20)

Could it really be that...simple?

I challenge you (again). Tell somebody, "God loves you. Jesus died for you."
Do it today.

John <><