Update and Musings on our WIMPY MAN CHURCH?
November 5, 2007 by danielward
Praise the Lord, the money I was waiting on came through. If you prayed then blessings to you, and if you didn’t, then blessings to you as well.
But this main blog entry, isn’t on me, instead I decided to write about our MAN CHURCH and how I’ve decided to call it the wimpy man church.
Now I could lose my listings on a few blogrolls because of this, but I’ve decided to say it out loud and not proud, that at this moment in time Re:Hope is mostly a congregation that loves to act hard, loves to mock and joke, loves to be well MANLY all of the time, but only when it’s in our comfort zone.
My time spent in Swansea for only a little over a month has made me realise just how far we’ve got to go when it comes to outreach. When it comes to giving our testimony’s. When it comes to maturity, but most importantly when it comes to courage.
My realisation of this has come out of a conversation I have had recently with a gentleman the other day about “Evangelicals”. He started talking to me about the great commonality regarding the way in which they operate and express their faith, just as evangelicals have the same opinions on Charismatics. (This man was of course a charismatic.)
“Sure, they may do the bible and prayer well, but when it comes to things such as talking to people and evangelism, they just don’t have what it takes. They always buckle down as though they’re stepping into a bath that’s either too hot or too cold. They lack courage.” (A brief summary, but that’s pretty much what he said.)
My, that certainly made me uncomfortable. Re:Hope is a church that professes to be a gutsy church but when it comes down to it, we’re as timid as the baptists, and even then, I’ve seen them do some street preaching in the city centre!
I remember having conversations with people in our congregation before the feast, and asking them if they had organised the three people they were going to invite. Consistently I kept on getting the same answer. “I’m just afraid to ask because of what they will/say/think/do.”
Now let me say this. Yes God is moving in our church, yes he is blessing us, and yes he is answering prayer. But it is not enough.
We need a church that has the courage to give a sandwhich to someone without crippling fear. If we can’t buy a sandwhich how are we supposed to give the Gospel?
Now I know what you’re thinking. Sure this stuff will come about in time, and yes we will grow. A Congregation that’s growing must grow with courage. We want to be different so lets be different. It’s that simple.
We have seventy odd believers in our church give or take a few. Seventy odd believers most of whom struggle to give Gods word to those that need it. The simple and harsh truth is that we need to grow in this area, we need to push forward if we’re to have an impact on Glasgow.
Or we could stay the same, let our church grow slowly, taper off most likely, shrink and die like so many others.
Which one do you want? Which one does God want? Which Re:Hope does Glasgow need for the future?
Think about it, I know I haven’t
A very bold post friend…now THIS is courage! Thanks for the honest self-assessment.
Glad to hear your thoughts, your wrestling, and your honesty.
Grace and peace…JJ
Mostly true, but let’s be sure we’re defining evangelism correctly. When some people use the word, they mean ’street preaching’. That’s not Re:Hope’s style (nor Glasgow’s). Maybe there could be an argument for it.
What we should be doing is 1)living holy lives 2)being ready to respond to people’s questions 3)inviting to community events 4)looking for opportunities to ask intentional questions about what our friends believe.
Yes, we could improve in those areas. We could also improve in our mission activities.
ha, i did laugh at seventy ODD people…. i assume you didn’t mean we’re odd, but let’s hope we are odd ones out of lauck-lustre… and ones that have an affinity with courage-filled, Holy-Spirit- filled lives…