September 04, 2014
Outreach
During a luncheon last week I
sat across from a woman who lost her husband two years ago and she was having a
hard time adjusting to being single. “It’s not that I’m not social, but it was my
husband who usually started conversations and I joined in.” The woman has no
family or church family in the area, and although she visited a couple of
churches, none were a good fit. I invited her to my church, but I also told her
about my project of visiting churches and reporting on the experience. I was a
little taken aback by her enthusiasm in wanting to read the articles in hopes
that they would help her find a place to worship. For most of us, evangelistic efforts
revolve around inviting people to our own church. I have to admit that it has
never crossed my mind to offer anyone a referral.
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Gail;
-----Church is important. But I often think people get it mixed up with the Lord. In a way, that’s not so bad, because it is His body. But it isn’t Him, and coming to the Lord isn’t coming to church. But the mistake that has been really hard on the Lord’s work is thinking that my church is the church. If we zero in a bit further, we find the problem is with “my” more than “church”.
-----Everybody has a “my”. It is an interesting idea to ponder. As soon as I get it through my head that everyone else’s sense of self is just as prominent to them as mine is to me, I then realize I am much less a “me” and a whole lot more an “other” because there are so very many more people viewing me as an “other” than there are of me viewing myself as “me”. I am not saying we are disqualified from the race because the most of our knowledge and the most intimate of our knowledge has been developed and personalized by the one unique perspective only one’s self can have. Beyond that, we have a lot of knowledge given to us by others, but not only has come across lacking most of their perspectives, before it becomes much useful to us at all, it gets all wrapped up in our own perspectives. As giant as the sense of self is, as almost inescapable one’s one perspective is, it hardly gets much thought. So “your” church hardly ever seems to be “my” church because it is the Lord’s church, and He is “my” Lord.
-----The first thing I try to consider when making suggestions of going to church is what church would best fit this person’s spiritual, emotional, and mental needs. But most of the time, I don’t know the person well enough to know those things about them. So I will go through a short list to inform that there is a variety of churches available, “If you need things cut and dried and set like rules, you need some sort of Baptist Church or Church of Christ; if you need a lot of emotion and feeling that God is working wonders around you, go Pentecostal; if you think the Lord needs you to figure the Word out the best you can see it because the relationship, after all, is between you and Him first, then you need a good Christian Church;” etc.
-----Big worries about doctrines of those different churches? Which of any church is perfect in its doctrines and practices? Not even “mine”. Just avoid the ones way out there on the tips of the branches (and then, of course, wasn’t that where Jesus seemed to be to first century religious normality.)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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