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The GO Zone:The Church in America: It's Time to Go!
by Dave Weiss (Dave's bio)
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(Note: This article is excerpted from Dave's book, Radically Real: The Quest for Authenticity.)
Luke 12:28 says, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” In relation to this, I would ask the question, “Who has been given more than the church in America?” We are blessed with freedom to worship, to speak freely of our faith and to witness to the love of Jesus. The question is what are we doing with that freedom in the name of Jesus? Where are we today? Do we still have that missionary zeal? Do we still care about reaching our friends and neighbors with the Gospel? Before we say yes, I think we better think about the state of church today. The mainline churches are losing members in record numbers. There is still a large portion of the world that has not heard the Gospel. In America, it seems as though the society is moving further and further away from God. How can this be happening in a land that still has more religious freedom than most places in the world?
Don't even bother telling me about separation of church and state. Those words do not appear in the constitution. What does appear though is that, “Congress shall make no laws prohibiting the free practice of religion.” The advances our society has made against Christianity have not been made on their own merits, they have been made by our complacency. You see, what the constitution is really saying is that we are not going to make a state religion, one that causes worship by force, which is not true worship. This is a great law designed to give us religious freedom. It has been corrupted against Christianity because the father of lies will always oppose the truth of the Gospel and too many of the children of God have sat silently and allowed him to have his way. In truth today in a lot of the western church, the Great Commission has become the Great Omission. We have left it out in favor of comfort and security. Look at the rest of the world. In places in the world where there is great persecution, like China, the church is growing in unprecedented numbers. People are convinced that they have found the truth that will set them free and they are willing to face imprisonment and even death to share it with the lost. It might cause one to ask the question, “Has the church is the west grown too comfortable?”
The state the Western church is in today is not irreparable. Greater is He that is in us that he that is in the world. It is time for the Western Church to make a stand for the truth.
Could it be that the church has forgotten? Could it be that we have stopped being the body of Christ and become a loose confederacy of social justice clubs? Could it be that we are no longer one body but rather a group of people that get together out of sense of obligation and tradition rather than out of a commitment to the risen Lord? Sadly, I believe, in too many cases the answer is yes. We are comfortable, we are happy and we have somehow come to the conclusion that we are more worthy of salvation than those outside the church because we observe the ritual of Sunday church attendance. Like the church in Laodicea, we have become lukewarm. The church that God said He would spew out. I don't know about you, but I would hate to stand before the throne of my God, having been part of the church that made God want to vomit. If your church is not like the one I describe here good for you, praise the Lord for His blessing and then ask Him to show you a church that your congregation can light a fire under for Him. You see in this day and age in America, it's not just the world, that is to say the lost, that needs evangelism. No, I believe that there need to be people that go to the church and call it back to its call to go into the world and making disciples of all nations.
Don't wait for someone else to take up the charge. Don't wait for others to do this for you. God has called you, me, and every believer to share the Good News. I believe that if God had one message for the church in America and around the world, it would be, “What part of 'GO' don't you understand?”
Copyright 2002, Dave Weiss. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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About Dave Weiss: Dave Weiss is pastor of New Creation Fellowship, Reading, PA ( http://members.truepath.com/newcreation ). He is a member of the Write Group for Interlinc's Youth Leader's Only, a youth ministry resource. He has written Radically Real: The Quest for Authenticity. For more on Dave's Ministry go to http://www.radicallyreal.com
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