What Keeps The Church From Reaching People Far From God?

This topic has been bothering me for a while. Recently the Leadership at Northwest has decided to become a Missional Church. This means we are going to become a church that reaches people who are far from God, people who are lost.

From the reaction of some, you would have thought that we have become a group of heretics. We have the greatest message of hope in all the world (I am not talking about Obama here). The message is simple. The message is about Jesus. His death, burial, resurrection and what it means for you and me.

The criticism that I have heard lately is that we are talking to much about being on mission and reaching out. The problem with that statement is that if you are one of the people who believe this, you may have a problem with what Jesus teaches and the New Testament. It is all about making disciples and discipling people to disciple.

If you have a problem with being missional and reaching out, then why not stick to the Old Testament, living under the law. But, you will find in the Old Testament as well a story about a God who is providing a way for the Messiah to come and restore people into an authentic relationship with Him.

So you can't get away from it. It is everywhere!

Then there are some who see that being a missional church is very Biblical, but they still want to hold on to some of the same things they have always done. They either do it from ignorance or personal incentive. They may not know how do anything different. They have lived under the attractional or traditional model of church for so long, that is all they know how to produce. If this is you, there are plenty of resources out there to bring you up to speed with the missional church.

Then there is personal incentive. There are people who just like things their own way. When it is different it takes them out of their comfort zone. They want what they once had, even if it means their children, grandchildren, neighbor or co-worker may spend eternity in hell. The desire to continue to produce a church that is no longer relevant and no longer connects people to the real message of hope is dangerous to the spiritual welfare of so many people.

So what happens in the case of both these groups is they begin to work hard to justify what they have always done as being missional. Even if it has not worked before saying it is missional changes everything. Right? No! If it did nothing to connect people to Jesus before why would it connect people to Jesus now just because you deem it as missional? That is crazy logic!

Over the next several post, I am going to talk about the Missional church in relation to the model we have in the book of Acts. It was the first missional church, established by Jesus and carried on by His followers. So my question is, where did we go wrong?

A moment I will never forget

Basketball camp ended this morning and there is a moment I will never forget. It was not when Dereck Mushyamunda cooked a mouse at camp fire and ate it. It was not when Cole my son who was attending camp tried a piece of mouse that night. Both were moments etched in my mind forever. But there was a moment that brought tears to my eyes.

The last night of Basketball camp we have a carnival filled with basketball skill games. The money raised goes to the Mushyamunda village (in Zimbabwe) so they do not have to eat mice. Even though according to Dereck and Cole, mice taste pretty good.The games cost $5 each with some big prizes to those who win. One of the games that is played at the carnival is Knock-out. The game of knock-out is played with two balls. The players line up in a single file line and take turns shooting a free throw. When a free throw attempt is taken and missed the player must get the rebound and try to make a lay-up before the player behind him makes a shot. If he fails to make the shot before the player behind him, he is out of the game.

Johnny, the autistic kid decided to play. Without anyone saying a word, the player behind him made sure that Johnny always made his shot first. When the kid behind got out, the next kid did the same thing (and these kids were some of the top players in the camp). It got down to five kids left. Then four. Then three. Then two. And the last man standing was Johnny. He won the first game of knock-out.

He was interviewed after the game and Johnny said, "This was the greatest day of my life!"

Now I am pretty sure none of the boys at camp will see this blog, but I want to thank the young men at boys basketball camp for making this the greatest week of camp I have ever had. I will never forget that moment as we learned first hand what Jesus meant when he said, "Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me."

Round Lake Basketball camp

I have not blogged for a while, I am Round Lake Christian Assembly for basketball camp. Each year we do a half of week for girls and a half for boys. It is very tiring yet very rewarding. I am coaching a boys team that will play for the championship tomorrow morning. It is kind of funny since I do not really know what I am doing.

We have kid this week that is autistic. He is awesome! He is having a blast and the other boys have included him in everything. He scored a basket yesterday, which made everyone's week. He has already stood up during lunch to sin two songs. Not your usual camp songs, I mean top forty stuff. He is the best defender in the camp because he never leaves his man (he has followed him to the huddle during a time out).

You know God is like that with us. He follows us everywhere we go. Our problem is that we are not focused on our relationship with God. We do not acknowledge his presence. This young man, always is striving to do the right thing and he is very focused on it. How about you. Have you acknowledge God's presence today? Are you focused on pleasing God and focusing on his will? I think we all know the answer to that last one. Were not as good as we should be.

Fishing for Men

I went fishing with a guy in the church last Friday. We went up to Lake Erie to do some walleye and perch fishing. We didn't catch anything. Well that is not completely true. We didn't catch any keepers. Let me rephrase that, we did not catch anything we wanted to keep. Over all we did probably catch 20 or 30 fish, but we weren't counting. A couple of them were five pounds or better. But because they were not the right kind we didn't keep them. They were not what we were targeting.

It's funny, one of the guys with us was pumped when he caught a big sheephead. He wanted to take a picture of it, but we did not have a camera. We probably wouldn't have taken a picture of it anyway. It was not the right kind. We did not want it.

In Acts 10, Peter has a vision of a sheet being let down by it's four corners. It was filled with animals that were considered unclean by the law. A voice from heaven told him get up and eat. Peter replied, " Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."

Then the voice said, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

This vision was so that Peter would begin to change his paradigm. Until now it was unlawful for a Jew to associate with a Gentile. Peter had to make a quick change in attitude. Would he go with the Gentile men at his home to meet Cornelius? Yes. Why? Because God told him to and that was good enough for him. Jesus had said to Peter that if you follow me I will make you fishers of men. And even if you think one of those fish is not a keeper, you keep it.

How many of us are selective in who we associate with? How many of us decide what we are fishing for based on a specific target and when we catch something different we are not satisfied with the catch?

Our attitude should be the same as the guy who caught the big sheephead with us on Friday. He was excited because he caught something big. He was excited about the other fish he caught, even though they were not keepers. Why? Because he was there to fish and it did not matter what kind of fish he caught, he was successful because he caught fish.

How many times do we come in contact with people who desperately need to hear about Jesus and we blow them off because they are not the right kind. They are not our target audience, they not one of us. God spoke to Peter one day and said we have no right to call something impure that He has made clean.

What if there wasn't a Bible to Read?

I read a blog this morning that I have not been able to stop thinking about. It is by a friend who I went to college with that usually has some very edgy and thought provoking blogs. He published a blog today called: "Christians Spend to Much Time Reading the Bible" (read).

The question I had after reading it was, "What were the Apostles teaching which the early church devoted themselves to?" (Acts 2:42) Maybe we have devoted ourselves so much to deep theological issues, we have failed to see what is really important. And in our devotion to theology we have divided the church with the many denominations that exist. Maybe this is why so many churches are doing such a poor job at reaching lost people. I agree with Brian, maybe we read the Bible to much instead of living our lives a a testimony to Jesus.

I still want to know what it was that they taught which transformed their world and connected so many lost people to the kingdom. I think it was simple. When we read through the book of Acts the message doesn't change much. The message is highly focused one thing- The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Everything revolves around that one event in history.

The apostles teach people what that means for them personally. And then they ask them to believe in the message, repent of their lifestyle and follow Jesus. They may share stories of people who go through this transformation and people who do not. But the message is always the same, Jesus died and paid your penalty of sin which gives you the hope of eternal life. Then the question they ask is, "Do you believe this?"

The question is not, do you believe in the trinity? Or the virgin birth? Or the Bible (it was not even around then)? Or a certain creed of a denomination? We have made all these tests of faith. The question is that simple: "Do you believe that Jesus died, was buried and resurrected from the dead? Do you believe he did this for you so that you could have eternal life and be freed from the bondage of sin? If so then follow him.

Is it really that simple?

The Great Depression

I spent a little while this afternoon with Mrs. Newlon, who is 93 1/2. You count halves when you are under 5 and over 90. I once did a funeral for a guy who 106 1/2, it probably was appropriate to count months at that point. Anyway Mrs. Newlon and I started talking about the depression.

She said that she did not think that people who are her kids age and younger realize how difficult the depression was on people. I believe she is right. But when you think about, it was hard enough to make people change the way they lived for the rest of their lives. They did not waste anything. I can remember my grandmother washing aluminum foil, storing it in a drawer and using it until it fell apart. She did the same with plastic baggies. Everything that was left over went back into the refrigerator. You made things last as long as you could.

Mrs. Newlon talked about how at Christmas and Birthdays, there were no presents. she said even the rich kids did not get anything because their families were cutting back also. Nobody knew how bad it was going to get.

It was interesting listening to here remember those days. She said it was hard, but not bad, because everyone was going through the same thing. Everyone was in it together.

It made me think on the way back to the office. How would people today handle such a crisis? I mean, we have so much that we think we have to have in order to survive. Our lives have become very difficult. We do not really understand nor practice the concept of being content. We go and buy whatever we want (notice I said "want" not "need").

In the Bible, Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians: "I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything though Him who gives me strength" (Philippians 4:11-13).

I am not sure this is the case with a lot of Christ followers. This is seen in the attitude of many Christ followers who are looking for a church where they are comfortable. I am not sure God has told us we will be comfortable. As a matter of fact through the Bible we see people grow the most when they are not comfortable.

I am sure there are some Christ followers who take for granted the things God has blessed them with, never paying it forward to someone who is need.

Maybe the contentment issue is why so many people find themselves so far from God. Paul teaches us that the secret to being content is trusting that we can do anything through Jesus. The problem with our culture today is that we put more trust in the things of this world than we do in Jesus.

Maybe we need another depression to bring us back to God. Or maybe, we just need to learn to be content, trusting God not stuff. And maybe, if we learned to be content, we might just see Jesus in everything we do.

Thanks Mrs Newlon

Field of Dreams - Yankee Stadium

I was watching the end of Major League Baseball's Home Run derby i realized Yankee Stadium has a half of season left. Then they are going to tear it down. Maybe they should have listened to James Earl Jones' in the movie field of dreams before they made that decision. Somethings need to be cherished above thinking about trying to make a buck.


How can organizations with a rich history forsake something that has been a part of that history. Tiger stadium was just torn down this last weekend. What is going on!
These two stadiums have been the homes of icons like, Babe Ruth, Lou Gerhig, Ty Cobb, Al Kaline, Micky Mantle, Yogi Bera, the list is endless. There were legendary world series played in both of these stadiums. It is a part of our history, a history that will soon be forgotten. This is why I do not watch a lot of baseball anymore. It is all about the money.

I will never forget the two times I visited Yankee stadium. The first time I took a trip with a group of guys and watched the Seattle Mariners play the Yankees. We watched a group of Japanese business men come in during the 3rd inning carrying a boxed meal. There was about thirty of them. In unison they opened up their meals which consisted of sushi. One of them, it must have been their leader, stood up and said something in their native language. They all raised their hands as he motioned for the beer guy. They drank their beer, ate their sushi and fell asleep. All of them, slumped over in their seats. The sixth inning came and their fearless leader stood up and said something again, they all got up and left.

They took for granted where they were. They missed Randy Johnson pitching for the Mariners. They missed a grand slam (one of the five in a row Louie and I saw at five different stadiums that summer. The second of which occurred at Tiger stadium. And then there was the one the next night in Fenway by a guy who had three career home runs two of which were grand slams). They missed Ken Griffey Jr. playing on this hallowed ground in center field. The same center field that Mickey Mantle played in.

The second time in Yankee Stadium was with a group that had worked all week at a small church in Greenpoint (Brooklyn). We road the subway to the stadium and sat in the bleachers. It was against the Indians. I had my Indians hat on which was an invitation to get pelted with peanuts. An old lady in front of me dressed in Yankee gear from head to toe rubbed it in when the Yankees hit a home run to go ahead. She turned to me kissed her hand, touched the Indian on the front of my hat and said, "We love ya, but we are going to kick your ***!" She was wrong, the Indian won that day when Albert Bell hit a home run to give the Indians the lead. I will give her this, she was a fan and understood the hallowed ground she was sitting in, "The House that Ruth Built."

I would not have as much trouble with this if they would not tear these great stadiums down. I mean people travel from around the world to see the great Colosseum in Rome. It is an icon and a part of their history. So is Yankee Stadium and Tiger Stadium. Thanks Major League baseball for tearing down two places where we will never hear a dad say again, "My dad used to bring me here when I was your age."

I write this blog as a tribute to Yankee Stadium and all the memories that go with it. If you have been to Yankee Stadium, take the time to share your memories of this icon in the world of sports as it makes it's last stand.