For about a year now, I’ve had an ongoing conversation with my wife about the state of the local church. The burden felt in our conversation was for those in need of a true experience with God. Sometimes doing church gets in the way of us being the church and many who were once on fire for God are flaming out, becoming fickle and faltering in their faith.
We never asked how we were the solution, we put our heads down and worked to be better stewards in our local assemblies. Recently, while in conversation it happened again but this time, it was different! What we realized during the latest conversation is that the problems we noticed weren’t only visible to us. The pandemic ushered in the epidemic of an exodus from the local church. What made this interesting is the realization that not everyone leaving the church is leaving the faith.
…the solution is not simply to do more of the same..
What is there to do? What could we do? It didn’t take long for the answer to show up. We simply decided to get involved and get in touch with people to hear their stories without judgement, be a safe haven and help usher people back to the faith, into the fold a real sense of what a relationship with God is. If this were a 21st Century problem, we would be surprised, but it is probably as old as the church. As long as Christ’s perfection remains in the hands of imperfect people, we’re bound to mess up. Even Paul and Barnabas had a “sharp disagreement” (Acts 15:39) about the direction of their shared ministry.
What do we do this? The Apostle Paul told us that as believers, we are given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18) and with that we understand that though new in Christ, many are seeking a new experience in regard to their worship experience and/or the local assembly. The reasons differ so we’re not coming to talk, we’re here to listen! We will take what we know and will build on it. We will also take the information shared with us and work to find ways to reach the need presented.
We view this call as ministry. We decided that for now, the solution is not the launching of a physical or virtual “church.” In this case, the solution is not simply to do more of the same. Rather, the solution is to go where the people are and get into the reality of their experience to walk with them through it and to new strength, resolve and greater Christian commitment.
Some of our friends and family members have abandoned the faith of their youth and better days. We want to know why and how we can help restore that. We’re even open to leading you through new experiences in the faith to cement a new decision to follow Jesus. It’s our desire to see everyone make a decision to make Christ Lord and Savior of their lives. We know that everyone won’t but that won’t stop us from making the offer.
Each week, you can join us in a pre-recorded broadcast on YouTube (you can stream it, here) where we’ll address many of the topics our friends and family have shared with us. We even have friends who are faithful in their call but tired of the unending rigors of ministry in the local assembly. We don’t want you to crash and burn, we want to offer you a respite and a place doff the grueling demands of ministry, if only for the length of the broadcast.
We know that everyone won’t but that won’t stop us from making the offer.
This is full fledged ministry for us and we’re working for those that need us! We have been enlisted to this work and we plan to see it through while discussing the funny thing that happened on the way home from church! If you’ve found yourself away from service or estranged from the faith for whatever reason, you’re welcomed to take short survey and fill us in on how we can help. You don’t have to answer every question, but the more information you provide, the better we can determine how to better serve you! Take the survey, here.