Last night after two hours of hardcore rollerblade hockey I sat in the car with Ron. I was appologizing for having to rush of right at the end to get home to my familly, it had taken longer than I expected, I wish I could have stayed end gotten to know the guys a bit.
Ron asked me if I play football, and I said no. Would I like to? Not really? There was a game with the international church last week, Ron, I said, I really don’t need to get to know any more church people….
Ah, a man like me said Ron, but I can’t bring these guys to church, for them we need something special, lika a BBQ with a professional athlete coming to witness. I am all with you Ron, I said, lets make it happen.
But it really got me thinking, why is it that our corps is not a place where we can bring our unsaved friends how have we gotten to a place where we are so far from anything we are willing to present to people from the outside. Why can’t the local corps be the place we are most eager to share withour friends. Because that is really how it should be. And the last question in my litany of question is how are we going to make it so?
Haha! My thoughts exactly for the last few days.
In my church here down under, the announcements are always ended with the question “Who are you going to bring to church next weekend?”. That’s how people gets saved, every week.
Yo!
Not into the whole blog-thing, I’m still using the old-fashioned, tried-and-true Internet Discussion Forum way of communicating. 🙂 And yesterday, coincidentally, I posted about an experience of the same kind.
http://www.arcusforlag.se/jakten/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=19#p19
I know that YOU, Mr Olterman, reads swedish and maybe some of your users here does, as well. But the point is (in short) that I was invited to this church to do standup comedy. They were having an “outreach” and the point was to invite your unchurched friends to this happening. Once there a standup comedian (that is me) should try to connect to the unchurched, talking a bit and making some jokes about church-behaviour, so that everyone should feel welcome and a part of something, even if you thought you had nothing in common with the person sitting next to you.
So what happened was – nobody from the outside came.
We were sitting, some 70 people, in this “outreach” and we were all reached.
Why not move the whole thing to were people actually were? Just ONE block up the street, there is a pub with a club, with a stage, great sound and everything. We should have been there, doing church, instead.
Please explain to me why we are spending a WHOLE DAY with workshops on practical evangelism, yet are not able to invite ONE new person to church.
I couldnt agree with you more!
And if we look at the dawn of the salvation army, we where an offensive army, constantly seeking out the lost so that we could present them with the good news.
Jesus said “GO ye therefore…” not sit idly in your comfy churches, my other favorite is in acts right after Jesus ascension. ([bible]acts 1:11[/bible]) The angels appearing to the dazzled disciples say “You men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking to the sky….”. Their comment implying GO NOW!
We are in a war, you cannot win a war by sitting idly in a bomb shelter, Attack is the best defense and the attack naturally must be into enemy territory, come on everybody lets go to the pub!