Church of Your Choice: (Some of us are old enough to remember the slogan.)
"If you're tired of your sin, then we'll welcome you in. If you're not, you'll still feel right at home."
We'd all love for evangelism to mean just being winsome and attracting people to Christ. I'm perhaps a bit curmudgeonly to be adequately winsome, but it's still an easier goal than trying to be prophetic. And it's more pleasant to think we're all "close enough."
But we know what Jesus said about division, and about the world hating him and therefore hating his followers. And it isn't hard to recall people whose sins are pretty dramatic in our eyes, and who really ought to repent.
So how does one manage to be both accurate and winsome? Jesus said to welcome the children, who generally aren't motivated by a hunger for forgiveness. But he discouraged people who weren't "counting the cost."
Nobody said it was easy... Probably one big first step is not to act as though we've "arrived." (There are two kinds of Christians: those who struggle with besetting sins and those who've given up.)
1 comment:
I remember the ad well. "Worship at the church of your choice." That was a very American sentiment in the mid-60's, or perhaps a little earlier. I still think of it whenever I see people running, golfing, or boating; or when I read about people's Sunday traditions of sitting in bed doing the crossword, with brunch.
We do worship at the church of our choice. Every one of us.
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