Yesterday I talked about how our culture is spiritually hungry and desperately looking for authentic Christians. Yet in this time of spiritual hunger the church is declining. Not because the church won’t accommodate the culture, many churches are changing things to make things more appealing. Despite their attempt to please, many churches have nempty seats and little impact on people’s lives. Why aren’t people looking to the church? There are several answers to this question, but I think it all boils down to the fact the world looks at the church and sees people who cheat in their businesses, cheat on their spouses, they see people who gossip (I mean prayer request), and character assassinate, jump from bed to bed, get drunk, do drugs and complain as much as they do.
George Barna reported “Of more than 70 moral behaviours we study, when we compare Christians to non-Christians we rarely find substantial differences.” Ask any non believer what comes to mind when they think of Christian, the most common answer is “judgmental” even though Jesus said that he came into the world not to judge it, but save it!
In a word, they see hypocrites. People who say they have been changed and yet behave just like the rest of the world day in and day out. We really don’t practice what we preach! And yet, as I look at what the scripture teaches I see that we need to go out of our way to lead people to experience GOD, but now in that process maybe we need to redefine what it means to be a believer?
Sometimes I wonder if we make our faith simply a religion and we conveniently leave Jesus out of the picture? I wonder if we all need to be reminded that Jesus invited people into a relationship, a journey, that he invited us to have our spiritual thirst quenched?
George Barna reported “Of more than 70 moral behaviours we study, when we compare Christians to non-Christians we rarely find substantial differences.” Ask any non believer what comes to mind when they think of Christian, the most common answer is “judgmental” even though Jesus said that he came into the world not to judge it, but save it!
In a word, they see hypocrites. People who say they have been changed and yet behave just like the rest of the world day in and day out. We really don’t practice what we preach! And yet, as I look at what the scripture teaches I see that we need to go out of our way to lead people to experience GOD, but now in that process maybe we need to redefine what it means to be a believer?
Sometimes I wonder if we make our faith simply a religion and we conveniently leave Jesus out of the picture? I wonder if we all need to be reminded that Jesus invited people into a relationship, a journey, that he invited us to have our spiritual thirst quenched?
What are your thoughts?
