Is Your Church a Lighthouse?
Far too often, in the modern church, we like to compensate for our inadequacies. If we aren’t reaching adults, we’ll spend tons of money to buy buses to start a bus ministry. If we aren’t reaching the kids, we compensate by buying fancy furniture for the church auditorium. It’s all very predictable. Humans like to ease their conscience by making up in some areas where they lack in others.
One of the most obvious examples of this is in missions.
I live in a city saturated with churches. There are literally 2 churches, of 2 different denominations, directly next to eachother 5 minutes from where I am writing this blog post.
For the most part, the city I live in is unchurched or non-Christian. Yet we probably have more churches in total than any other county in our state.
That means that for all the great numbers of churches, they are virtually ineffective in reaching the community. And what are they doing about that little problem? (and it is considered a little problem) We bump up the support for missions.
Now don’t get the wrong idea here. I’m not trying to be critical of giving to missions here. I’m simply saying that when churches reach in their pockets and pay off some missionaries to ease their guilt for not reaching an unchurched community, I have a problem with that.
There’s an old saying that goes “the light that shines farthest, shines brightest at home.”
Inevitably, a church that tries to shine far without shining bright, will end up not shining at all. Eventually, church members die. Young couples leave. Teenagers become disinterested. All because your church has decided to shine far rather than bright. The church shrinks, has to cut its missions budget (or risk going into debt), and the guilt returns. What now? You can’t shine far or bright.
There’s just one lesson to learn here. If you aren’t reaching your community, then you shouldn’t be trying to reach other communities. Shine bright first, then shine far. Take that money that you are planning on sending to missions and use it at home FIRST.
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A simple posting, but truer than most churches understand. It is interesting that the country that churches send missionaries to the most around the world is the United States. Good post.
I think that before a church can reach its own community, it has to understand it. Many churches are set in their ways and routines, which may not be appealing to those outside the church. They’re not willing to change to make an impact on their own community, so they do exactly as you say - pass the hat, send the money to someone else’s community for missions, and pat themselves on the back for helping reach the world. But what they’ve really funded is justification for their own refusal to change. There is precious little difference between a rut and a grave.
I am a young pastor living in a community similar to the one you write about in your blog. At first glance my reaction to your comments was, “right on”. But in retrospect I do feel it is this pastors responsibility to ask the question, “ok so how do we reach this community?” Too many of us know the problem is we are not reaching the community, but how many of us are offering solutions. Please keep writing and informing people of the problems, but get involved in the solutions. I would read anything posted on new ideas of how to reach out. I do agree with your statements, but I am challenging you to take it further.