I was driving in town today and I saw a church sign that said, "Free wight-loss class, Tuesday night 8:00. Public Welcome." I have no problem with churches offering weight loss classes, God knows we can use them in this country. However, the message on the sign tells us a great deal about the state of the American Church. Does anyone else find it sad that a church has to put "public welcome" on a sign in relation to one of their programs? Is it possible that this isn't as harmless as it sounds?
The fact is that people should know that they are welcome to a church for anything. It's obvious that this church felt it important to put on their sign that the public is welcome because there is a perception among the public that they need an invitation to church. I don't fault this church for their message, I fault the Church as a whole for closing themselves off for so long, that people think they need a personal invitation to come. Man, do we have a lot of work to do.
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8 comments:
honestly, this may be part of the whole church growth phenom that sprang up in the eighties (or was it the 70's?). People stopped feeling welcome in the faith communities surrounding them. Churches, seeing this trend away from church, started marketing, advertising, and trying to fix what they had broken. Sad. Truly sad that it's come to this.
how do we fix it? or can we?
burn the church down and actually be the church: love people without agendas; serve people without agendas; feed people without agendas; actually show them that the church doesn't suck (not all of us anyway). Break the stereotype wherever and how ever you can.
There was a time when the church was the center of a community, like synagogues in Jesus' time. Sitting in New Testament listening to my prof. describe this lifestlye kind of made me a little sad. Now I feel like churches are just competing against one another. It's really bad in Huntington. There are 50 churches, and they love to fight over us good Christian college kids--we get flyers in our mailboxes almost weekly. But there is a whole section of this city where no one goes to church, in fact, the parents don't have time to love on their kids. Who's fighting to get these people in the door? There is complete disunity among man-made churches. Yuck, this makes me mad.
yeah, competition is a huge problem. the nazarene youth minister and i made a pact with each other after he moved here that we wouldn't try and steal each other's kids. we're both cool with it and support each other. it's so relieving to not have to worry about that stuff. although i found out that a certain church in our community is actively pursuing some of our attenders. it's freakin' ridiculous. it doesn't build the kingdom at all, it just swaps believers. why doesn't God just fry us all and forget about the whole thing? i'm glad i'm not him.
we're glad you aren't God either, brad. really glad.
did sarah say, "yuck?" I think that's a technical term isn't it?
now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go steal some kids from the other christian church in town. I think i'll lure them in with chocolate and Toby Mac.
mmmm....Toby Mac....
read this today and thought of this post. the quote comes from steve chalke's book "the lost message of jesus."
"We may not exclude tax-collectors or hemorrhaging women, but what about schizophrenics, divorcees, single people, one-parent families, drug users, transsexuals or those struggling with their faith? As theologian Gustavo Gutierrez put it, our quest should be drive by 'the human being who is not considered human by the present social order--the exploited classes, marginalized ethnic groups and despised cultures. Our question is how to tell the non-person that God is love.'"
amen to that, eh?
good thoughts. we pick and choose who needs Jesus, and the funny thing (actually it isn't) is that the people we pick don't really need him because they are self-sufficient anyway. they have it all, Jesus is just a sidebar to their lives.
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