Rethinking Church?

Enough already!

Yet another article is out by a 20-something “Christian hipster” making his argument against evangelism and for the need to build relationships within which we can tell stories.

Throughout the decline of the church in America, we have had many such “new leaders” in the church make their pitch against evangelism (the latest one doesn’t even want to use the term, finding the word so unappealing) and for relationship building, completely missing the fact that the greatest evangelist ever — Jesus Christ — was relational in His evangelism. Now the new focus is on telling your story. Yes, we have numerous preachers preaching the need to tell your own story.

All the while, the church continues to decline.

All of this has come about because “leader” after leader seem to think they need to rethink how to “do church.”

There’s one reason why church leaders should rethink how to do church: when they aren’t following the biblical model for the church.

None of these leaders have come up with a better way to do church than God did when He envisioned it. Then He provided us with the model, complete with methods, in the New Testament. And guess what, when we actually apply and follow scripture, it works.

This recent writer has a particular disdain for Christian tracts. I’ve never been a user of tracts, but I know many who have. Yet I would wager there have been more people who have come to Christ through a tract that told the Gospel story than there ever will be through you or I telling our own stories.

Our stories don’t change lives. God’s story does. Sharing it so others can know His story, and have their lives changed, is called “evangelism.”

Maybe we need to rethink how we do church: are we doing it God’s way, or creating our own culturally-directed models?

Scotty