The Church belongs to those people who have dared to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. It belongs to them because it is them. Only believers in Jesus can be the Church. No person who does not believe that Jesus is the Son of God can be a part of it. What can a person who does not believe offer the person who does believe?
Our idea of church today has run off its tracks, and it did so long ago. Our Christian leaders, preachers, and teachers have crippled the Church. They have wanted to make the Church a place where unbelievers, sinners, feel at ease. Our preachers have made the Church a place where the unbeliever can come and not be offended. Many church services today try to incorporate something secular that may have some "spiritual" element to it. Let me give you a couple of examples from music. I went to a large church in Texas for two and a half years. One morning service one of the musicians sat at the piano and sang "The Scientist" by Coldplay. I sat there totally confused. Of what relevance was that song in a church service, A place where Christians gather to worship the God of all Creation? Just a few weeks ago I visited a church here in Tallahassee. As I walked in the band was singing its first song. It was the big hit "I'm Not Gonna Write You a Love Song." I thought, what is going on? And just what I thought would follow did. A bunch of announcements and a weak talk.
Have we forgotten what the mission of the Church is? The Church doesn't allow the world to dictate how it operates. It doesn't allow the world to shape the way it conducts its church services. It doesn't allow for one breath of the world to be whispered in its ears. Enough is enough.
The mission of the Blood-bought Bride of Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God is to ovetake the world where it stands. The light exposes the darkness, and it penetrates the world and slays the dead sinner in his world to bring him to life. There is no other way. The Church is the most powerful group of people in all the earth, yet we belittle our mission. When the Church incorporates any secular component when it worships together it is finished. It is immediately rocked back on its heels waiting for the fatal blow to strike it and do away with it. It has failed to meet the world in the midst of its own misery, sin, and death to set it free. The Church is commanded to go into the very middle of the lost, sinful world and preach the gospel. Most preachers today have reversed that. Church leaders think that they have to get the sinners to their church services to hear the Bible and to see how Christians live. That's the farthest thing from what God demanded that Christians do. If the world doesn't see the Church living what it says it believes in the middle of its own lostness, then it will not care to come to any service and see a momentary display of something superficial.
Church is not for the unbeliever! Are they welcome to come? Yes. I deeply wish that more of them would. But, church is for Christians because the Church is Christians. It is where Christians come together to worship the Holy, Living God. It is where Christians are to be encouraged, convicted, and challenged. Here's the point. If Christians are being challenged by their preachers to live the way Jesus demands, then the lost will come to church. If Christians are being the light of the world, then sinners will be confronted with their own sinfulness. We must stop trying to get the sinner to church in order to save him. Instead, we must do what Jesus demands. We must save him from his own world, in his own world.
