Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind

Church Planting: Brad Brisco
Tuesday, January 25, 2005

One of the great challenges of ministry, especially in the area of church planting, lies in getting Christians to put the needs of those who do not know Christ before their own personal needs. When considering doing new things in the church to reach out to lost people it is easy for us to default to our own personal needs and desires. We know what we like in the areas such as music and teaching; and simply put, we want what we like. Unfortunately, in many cases our own personal preferences keep us from reaching out to the world around us.

This week I revisited one of my favorite books on the church entitled An Unstoppable Force, Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind by Erwin McManus. McManus is Lead Pastor of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles. Mosaic is a large multi-cultural church that has a strong reputation for engaging the culture and impacting the community in a powerful way. Here is an excerpt from the book that speaks to the challenge of looking past our own desires in the church.

"Some of the best communicators of the Scriptures who I know have had people leave their churches for the express reason that they are not being fed. I know that we are the sheep of God, and sheep require the Shepherd to feed them, but there must come a time when we become shepherds who feed others.

Is it really all about us being fed? I think it might be important to remember that over 60 percent of Americans are overweight or even obese. Is it possible that this is also true in the arena of personal spirituality? Are we too much about us getting fed and too little about us exercising our faith?

Too many of our statements about the crisis in the American church center on the superficial arena of style, and neglect to go to the core issue of self. At the core of so much of the resistance the church is experiencing is the preservation of selfishness and self-centeredness. It is one thing to have a preference; it is another to demand that one's preferences be honored above the needs of those without Christ.

For some churches, maintaining a standard of hymns and pews has been more important than the changing world around them. Now we have to live with the reality that, all too many times, we kept our traditions and lost our children. The focus deteriorated to formatting around the desires of Christians, and in the process, we lost our immediacy and responsiveness to obeying God's call to reach the nations."