thechurchblog

If you’re been following the story of Crossroads Church, you’re familiar with our vision to be the church for the portion of our population that has forsaken all things “church.” These are people who would be out of place in a “normal” church — even one as dynamic and open as some truly are. We connect with these people through our relationships at work, school — any place where we have an opportunity to have influence with another person just by “being there.” Ultimately, we seek to build relationships with people that will(hopefully) show them the way to Christ — but that don’t depend upon their accepting or rejecting Christ. Sound confusing? In a nutshell, if our new friends reject Christ, that’s okay — just as long as they don’t reject US in the process. If we’re not rejected, we’ll have another chance to show Christ to them in the future. To prevent the tragedy of losing such a relationship, we need to understand what genuine love and acceptance looks like. A key point in this is realizing that before God wants people to be good, He wants them to be SAVED. After all, good fruit cannot be produced by the old nature. In other words, don’t condemn the actions unless you’re committed to healing the heart. But perhaps most importantly, we’re seeking ways to understand how pure, undefiled love can be promoted in all our relationships — not just those within the Church.
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One of the goals of Crossroads Church is to be able to take the church to the people, not just wait for the people to come to the church. We do that by being ministers at our jobs, at school, in coffeeshops, etc. Jesus regularly held meetings where the people were. We need to do the same — and get over our hangups regarding what constitutes a “legitimate” meeting of the church.
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People are tired. They’re tired of working for unappreciative bosses (supervisors, teachers, pastors, etc.), tired of wasting time on repetitive tasks, tired of having to work a job to make a meager living. People are tired of the way things are — and they wish things could change.

I’ve had the chance to talk to a large number of people as part of the process of planting this new church. Many seem interested in the new church — but often because of the simple fact that they’re tired of their old church. (Lots of them have in fact been through several churches in their past.) They’re tired of “not getting fed,” tired of “too many glitzy programs,” or even tired of “spending so much money on staff and buildings.”

You know what I’m tired of? I’m tired of lost people going to hell.
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My mother sent me an encouraging email forward today. It is a copy of the October 18 message from D. Max Whitfield, Biship of the Northwest Texas and New Mexico Annual Conferences of the United Methodist Church. As some of you know, I grew up in the Methodist church and still have a soft place in my heart for those Methodists. Anyway, Biship Whitfield’s message is all about how in the year 1910, the Northwest Texas Conference had 8,900 people accept Jesus Christ for the first time, resulting in a 25% increase in overall church attendence. The second point of the article is that only 189 out of 415 churches actually met in their own buildings at the time — the rest met in people’s houses! Read it for yourself – I’ve included the complete text of the article below.
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I’ve had a long reading list sitting on the shelf next to by bed for about two months now. I don’t get too many opportunities to get lost in a good book these days — usually just a few minutes before I fall asleep at night. However, I am slowly making it through my list. The first book I grabbed is Don Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality” (Thomas Nelson). It is the first “Christian” book that I have actually read cover-to-cover in about six years.
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Continuing on with observations and ruminations from the Acts-29 Boot Camp, I’ve been camping on the concept of what makes church attractive to the masses. We’ve done it all at my church, tried everything to keep people interested in coming and relating to the church in their everyday lives. Some ideas have worked, some haven’t. The common thread is that we are constantly looking for the “next idea” – the next big thing that will keep people interested in the things of God. What if the “next big thing” is just preaching a big Jesus?

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