We can get so obsessed with the benefits of the gospel – we travel far and pay a lot of money to preachers to tell us we are blessed, healed, righteous – and we are all those things, but the church must exist for the lost. Pastors need to lead the way in this – are you standing week after week in front of overfed sheep and not doing anything to equip and prepare and plan and structure church to be reaching the lost? When was the last time you handed your pulpit over to an evangelist?
Sadly one of the reasons that so many pastors cannot do this is the rise of spoiled sheep – they want the whole service to be about them! They don’t want to praise Jesus, they want to sing about their identity (nothing wrong with either of those, but if all you do is the latter, there’s a problem!), they don’t want to hear a sermon on praying for the lost or sharing their faith – don’t you know that’s legalism and they are under grace?! We need to as churches exist for the lost! Some Christians are so far from thinking of the lost and so self-obsessed they do not even go to church! That’s the most selfish a Christian can be – not going to a church. How can you help a lost person on your own? How can you bring them into an experience of corporate worship and being equipped if you are not? That’s not grace you not going to church, it’s doubt and unbelief.
We have to realize that lost lives matter! They do not know Jesus, and are not heading for eternity in heaven with Jesus. They need to be reached with the good news. Jesus came for them and we should be like Jesus.
I had an email a short while ago from a pastor, he was upset that I was running a network of six churches, for some reason, maybe envy, I don’t know. I said that his church had more assets and more people than mine, and he could easily plant more churches. He said “I just don’t have the drive that you do, and I don’t want to go to small places like you do”. Now maybe he is just staying in his lane and maybe he isn’t called to plant more churches, but on the other hand, maybe he is waiting for a “call” that will never come. You do not need a call to go into all the world and make disciples, and you do not need a brain to know the best way to make disciples is plant churches.
We want to be like Jesus we need to come that people might have life! That is what Jesus did, isn’t it (John 10.10)?! Jesus came to bring life to people – and as His ambassadors that is what we should do! Think of ways you can share the good news with others. Think of how you can bring people to church, think about how you can welcome new people in church, think about how you can bring life to people – the gospel, the grace of God, the grace of healing to people! We need to be like Jesus – and bring life to others, especially the lost. Let’s not feed the well-fed all the time, but also feed the hungry.
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