The Mission Field Awaits

As believers in Christ, each one of us needs to invest four minutes of our time today to watch this video!

As we look around at churches in our community, we see a great deal of ministry and programs going on - inside the four walls of those buildings. When are we going to realize that the days of "Build it, and they will come." or "Host it, and they will come." are over? The unchurched are unchurched for a reason... They aren't interested in going to church and Christians haven't been interested in going to them!

Taking a page from Jesus' model of ministry, the Church must begin to go to the unchurched. Pastors and ministry leaders need to lead people out of the comfortable sanctuaries and into the heat of summer and coldness of winter. We need to bring the light of Christ into the dark areas of our communities.

One of the visions God gave to me when I moved to Culpeper was to be a proponent of unifying the Body of Christ in this community. Through initiatives like Pray Culpeper, 1 Culpeper and the Warming Shelter ministry, I believe our community has taken some steps in the right direction. We've been crawling. Now it's time to start walking and running. I believe the rubber meets the road when churches start partnering with other local churches to reach the lost, not just other Christians.

We've placed a great deal of emphasis on praying for our community. Great! Let's continue to do that. Now, in that covering, let's get up off of our knees and go in the power and strength the Lord has given us. Let's bring God's hope to the doorsteps of those in hopeless situations. Let's speak the empowering words of the Gospel to those in bondage to addiction. Let's walk in the boldness of the Lord Almighty into those areas where society says, "Stay away." It's going to take time, effort and money. It's easy to pray. It's easy to talk about it. Are we willing to actually do it?

I'm tired of the Church being thought of as judgmental, out of touch and boring. I'm tired of the Church not understanding how to show grace, relying on dated ministry strategies and programs that are no longer relevant to our culture today and lengthy, verbose lectures that are given by people who enjoy hearing their own voice. If we think doing church the same way it was done 30 years ago - even 15 years ago - is effective, let me encourage you to watch the video above again. It's not working! We're losing the battle in winning people to Christ!

Let's put down our pride, our traditions and our programs. Let's put aside our denominational tendencies and form relationships with local churches that carry different names and have different styles than ours. Let's stop treating the non-essentials of the Christian doctrine like they're essential. Let's be the Body of Christ and fulfill the Great Commission!