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| Pastor Jason Thornton |
In January’s
newsletter, I wrote the first article in a series entitled “The Church “Crisis”
and what we can do about it.” In
January’s article, I gave the brief definition of this crisis as the steady
decline in church membership and attendance since the 1960s. I concluded that the key to reverse this
trend and escape the crisis is to build the church through building relationships. Now the question is – “Where do we start?”
We must start
this process of church building – or I prefer the term Kingdom building – by fully
understanding WHY building our church membership is something we should want to
do in the first place. We must be very
clear about our answer to WHY building our church is desirable, and we must
always keep our answer to this question at the center of everything we do to
build our church, because we need to avoid some dangerous pitfalls. The dangerous pitfalls we must avoid are 1)
bringing new people to church to make sure we can pay our bills and/or “keep
the doors open”; and 2) encourage new people to join so they can help lighten
the load of our work. The source of both
pitfalls is the same. We must never get
caught in the trap of bringing new people to church so that they can serve us
and serve our needs.
OK. We still have the question, “WHY should we want
to bring new people to church?” The
answer to this question goes all the way back to the basics. Our intentions must align with the intentions
of Jesus. Why did Jesus want to bring
people into his Kingdom? Why did Jesus
choose to live among us? Why did Jesus
give his Life for us? I’ll let Jesus
speak for himself, “Greater love
has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command
you.” Jesus tells us, “This I command you, that you love one another.” (John
15:13-14 &17)
Jesus came to live among us, gave his life for us, and gave us the gift of
his Kingdom out of pure Love. And so, Love
must be our singular motivation in building Jesus’ Kingdom by bringing new
people to church.
Let’s think about it this way. Don’t
you want to share the things you love with the people you love? If you have a favorite book, or movie, or
activity, or recipe – don’t you talk about it with people you love so you can
share it with them? Don’t you ask a
friend to go to the movies with you, or camping, or skiing (etc.) so you can
share the joy of the experience and talk about it later? Don’t you make a favorite recipe so you and
those you love can share a great meal? Don’t
you introduce your friends to other friends?
Why should church be any different?
Our motivation in inviting a new person to church should be to introduce
them to the love of our friend Jesus and his Kingdom; to share the Good News,
the forgiveness, mercy, healing, encouragement, and joy of the experience, so
that we can talk about it later.
So you may be thinking, “Well that’s all fine and dandy Jason! I HAVE people I Love and I am trying my
hardest to get them to come to church. I
would LOVE to share the Love of Jesus and all the blessings of church with
them, but nothing I have said or done has moved them to come with me.” I share your frustration. There are people I love dearly that just will
not come to church voluntarily. Some
people seem to have somehow become inoculated against the love of Jesus and
blessings of church. I am planning on
addressing how we might be able to overcome these hurdles in a future
article. But these are advanced steps of
Kingdom building. For now, I want to
emphasize that this article is only about the very first step.
The very first step in Kingdom building is to align our intentions with the
intentions of Jesus, and Jesus’ intention is pure Love. If we let pure Love be the center of all of
our thinking and doing, we will be well on our way to filling the pews every
Sunday; well on the way to turning this “crisis” into a boon.
In Christ’s
Love,
Jason
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