When God looks at his bride, the church, he longs for her
to have a healthy heartbeat. He wants our hearts to beat with his love for the
lost, and he longs for evangelistic passion to flow through our veins.
The
Maker of heaven and earth wants to see each and every church alive with love
for the lost and engaged in reaching out with the message and grace of Jesus in
natural, organic ways.
God wants to draw people into our fellowship with the
assurance that they will be embraced by grace and introduced to the Savior,
Jesus. But this can happen only when the people in our church are deeply in
love with God.
When we are, our heartbeat is strong. When we do not love
God, it is difficult for us to love others. As God looks at the spiritual
monitor that registers the evangelistic heartbeat of a church, he sees one
of several different patterns.
What do you think God sees when he looks at your
church?
FLATLINE
Some churches have a loud, high drone and a flatline on
their heart monitor. There is no love for God, nor is there a relentless love
for the lost. These churches are closed off to visitors, their community, and
the world. They don’t reach out or train their members to share Jesus’ love.
Prayer for their community is nonexistent. There was a
heartbeat at some time in the distant past, but today the church is flatlining.
If this describes your church, don’t lose hope! We believe
in a God who can raise the dead. Heaven is watching your church’s heart
monitor, and the Spirit of God is always ready to send a pulse of heavenly
energy into your congregation’s heart to bring it back to life. God is ready to
return your church to her first love, Jesus Christ. And the Holy Spirit is
ready to move your church from apathy to passion.
WEAK
PULSE
Sometimes when a doctor checks for a pulse, he’ll say, “I
have a pulse, but it’s weak.” There is still life in the body, but action needs
to be taken quickly to sustain it.
Many churches have a pulse and there is life, but it’s
faint. There is love for God and for people, but it is waning.
If this is a picture of your church, be honest and admit
it. You might have a map on a wall somewhere with several pins showing where
you send money to support missionaries. You might do an event or two each year
that “spiritual seekers” are welcome to attend. You might even try to be
friendly if a guest or visitor happens to wander into your church on a Sunday
morning.
But honestly, your passion for outreach is gone.
Your church lacks a desperate love for God that will drive
you into the world with his good news. You are nice to people who visit your
church, but you don’t go out of your way to reach those who are far from God.
You send money overseas, but you don’t engage the mission field right next
door.
If this describes your congregation, you too need to fall
in love with God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—all over again. Yes, you still
care. You love God, and you love people. But it is time to rehabilitate your
congregation’s heart.
You might need to do some spiritual exercise and fortify
your heart to make it beat strongly again. The heart is a muscle, and if you
use it, it becomes stronger.
RAPID
HEARTBEAT
Sometimes a heart races wildly. This can be very dangerous,
because if a person’s heart pumps too fast for too long, it can lead to cardiac
arrest and eventually death.
Some churches’ monitor shows that their heart is beating
two or three times faster than a healthy heart. Because these churches love God
and want to be faithful to his love for lost people, they launch outreach
program after outreach program and initiative after initiative. Church members
grow tired and exhausted as the congregation jumps into the latest evangelistic
fads.
Outreach is not organic in a church like this. Instead, it
feels fabricated and inauthentic. While the motives are right, the practice of
outreach is so forced that it fails to bear much fruit. Churches like this
often experience frustration when they try lots of programs but never find
something that works. They invest lots of money and time, and they genuinely
love God, but lost people rarely come to know and embrace Jesus.
These churches need to love God enough to slow down. If
they want to establish an organic culture of outreach, they need to do less to
accomplish more. Better yet, they need to channel their energy, time, and
resources into a sustainable approach to church-wide evangelism. Whatever the
condition of your church’s heart, know that God is ready to increase your love
quotient. Evangelism is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. It’s not a fad; it’s the
fabric of a healthy church. It's not a system or a program; it’s the natural
fruit of a church that loves God.
GETTING
BACK TO YOUR FIRST LOVE
The first and most critical step a church needs to take to
move toward healthy outreach is to develop a growing love for God. In the book
of Revelation, Jesus says to the church of Ephesus, “Yet I hold this against
you: You have forsaken your first love.” Whenever our love for God ceases to be
first place in our hearts, our vision for reaching out wanes.
Jesus made this clear when he taught his disciples that the
first and most important of all the commandments is to “love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all
your strength.” This is not just our calling as individual followers of Christ;
it is also our calling as a church. If we forget our first love, our collective
heart will grow cold, and nothing that we do will have the impact we desire.
Loving God does not begin with our own efforts. It is based
on the awareness that God was passionately seeking us long before we ever
sought him. In the letter of First John, we find a powerful tutorial on the
love of God. We learn, first and foremost, that God is love. Because of his
love for us, we can become children of God.
The depth of the Father’s love was
revealed when he sent his only Son to this earth to die in our place, on the
cross, for our sins. As we are grounded in God’s love for us and as we learn to
walk in this love, we will continue to grow in our love for people and for God.
If your church is struggling to invest in reaching your
community and the world, ask yourself this question: are we a church that is on
fire with a passion for God? If reaching out to others has been pushed to the
back burner (or off the stove entirely), it probably won’t help to add some
spice to the meal. You need to start by turning up the heat.
Maybe your
church has lost its first love.
Remember,
God so loved the world that he gave.
Love gives. And when a congregation’s heart pounds hard for
God, we give of ourselves—our time, our resources, our lives—to love others.
This article adapted from Organic Outreach for Churches.
By Kevin Harney
First Posted HERE
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