[...]What’s Different? Church vs. Bar via BlogRodent[...]…

Why is Church not the most effective ministry?

Well its actually quite simple. Church is to edify ‘the believers’, people who aready know Christ. But the church is not the mission. The mission exist outside its wall in every house, bar, street corner, laundry matt, local co-op, Restaurant, office, youth club, home, and so on and so on…

We as believers go to church as another means of continuing our learning and fellowshipping with like minded people to recieve incouragement and support in the work God has called us to do.

You see Jesus didn’t go to the church to reach the unbeliever. He simply went there to inform the believers “I’m Here”. The mission for Jesus existed outside the walls of the church (much to the horror of the believers).

I go to church because I like being reminded by Jesus that he is here, but I also see the work of his hand changing the lives of people all around me. And while the 99 are well and safe in the pen (house) of the Lord, the real concern is for every single ‘one’ that is lost in the wilderness of this world on the brink of being consumed by the wolves of darkness.

My prayer is that we come to realise that God is working ahead of us and we need to stop (as a church) judging, condemning, and provinding the cold shoulder. We need to realise that God is opening doors in the hearts of those around us, in front of our very eyes, in the most unlikely of people. God is waiting for us to see and to stop being blinded by our own self-righteousness.

God Bless

SteveO

Thanks,
Carissa

Thanks for this post (and thanks to the comment-writers that struck my heart as well). And the Chuck Swindoll piece! It is such a comfort to read a man who has persevered in the faith make a statement like, “We’re the only outfit I know that shoots its wounded.” It’s a comfort to know I am not the only one with these kind of thoughts, and that the existence of such “cynicism” does not mean I am necessarily losing it. (It is okay to be cynical about things that are wrong.)

When I was in high school, I had friends who never drank, smoked, swore, or watched rated-R movies. They also never prayed with me, and I wouldn’t care to see any of them now. I made friends at my (Christian) college who did all of the above — who were full of doubts, questions, and problems. Those people prayed with me. They were not afraid of those parts of me I could not talk about in church.

Solidarity, brother. I was in a work bowling league last year. :)

Bethany

Great writing. I’m thankful that there are people like you who are progressive thinkers, and who don’t put God, church, or religion in a small tiny box.

I’m praying a bold prayer today thanks to you: God, make my church more like a bar.

:)

I have gone in a bar before, I went in a bar to “bring our new convert out”, so that he would be away from the lifestyle and people that were dragging him into the place he so desperately wanted out of.

I remember being in a bar and thinking, “How very sad. These people really think this is a “fun” place, but it was a hollow, empty void when I compared it to my Christian friends and the good “fun” we had together. Real fun. At the coffeeshops on the streets at 3AM, you can see how much fun the place really was, when you sit on the sidewalks of streets where people have been left and the so called “fun” is over and they have been abandoned and realize the reality of it all, the booze and sex.

We didn’t play the juke box, but our new “convert” did ask us to sing, “En La Cruz” (At the Cross, At the Cross, where I first saw the Light”) over and over again to him in the car, so he could hear the words. We took him and others home with us and prayed for them, we talked with them and loved them. We stayed up all night long praying with them to be delivered from drugs and alcohol and that their marriages would be healed. We cried around the altar with them and went to trailers where drugs were about to be delivered to drag them out, and empty out their alcohol and pray with them and answer questions for them about the rapture and see them go home to their wives. We visited places where guns lay out on the chairs and the situation was no good, and loved them and had young girls leave and go home to their sisters. We stopped kids alone on the streets at night and talked with them and invited them to our services.

We all were family at the Church, we were the Family of God! We prayed with each other at the altars and cried and confessed our faults one to another. We sit and talked with young girls who were about to run away and had them stay home instead. We welcomed homosexuals and they left their lifestyle and embraced the Lord and were great blessings to us. I remember singing a special with one former homosexual who arrived with long painted nails and in drag, after he came to the Lord, and stopped his lifestyle, we sang, “I Saw the Lord”. I believe we did.

We pioneered a Spanish Church and had people come who drove over 90 miles one way and reached out to the children and youth and people of all ages, and interpreted all our services. We held outdoor meetings and reached out to those held in bondage in the occult and astral travel and the goddess Diana. We evangelized, we supported missions, we started children churches and Royal Rangers and Missionettes and loved kids. We reached out to unwed Mothers, and those hurting and suicidal, even wrestling a gun from a young man’s hand to save his life one night. We saw demons speak from men and call us “stupid” and saw people delivered. We rebuked demons mid-sentence that cried out at us and saw them immediately stop and the woman go on speaking. We saw people delivered of tobacco and run go tell the Pastor the same night, as we walked away amazed at what God would do, even through us as yielded vessels. We were filled with the Holy Ghost. We prayed, we studied, welived the Word of God. We were led by the Spirit of God and yielded to Him and did not quench the Spirit of God, and all hell came against us……… and God STOOD with us.

THIS is the CHURCH I know! The Blood bought Church of the Living God! The Body of which Christ is Head.

Grace and compassion are not, should not, be selective, but I have seen that “Christian ” compassion come to a screeching halt when homosexuals are brought up, look in your heart and tell me that isn’t true with the Church?

Now this is the point that we MUST return our focus to: Who here can charge that Christ himself did not die for the homosexual? If Christ did not die for the homosexual, then He did not die for Bob “the Pharisee” either. Furthermore, if the grace of God was not extended to the homosexual, then the Apostle Paul himself was a liar, and the Word of God is absolutely false; for it is written in I Corinthians 6:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Yes, it is truly hard to love some “neighbors,” and even harder at times to accept that these “neighbors” can indeed come to a saving knowledge in Christ! But as it is written in I Timothy, “I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone — for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

But, as Common Swift has alluded to, it is also the sad truth that men thwart the will of God. In the case of “all men being saved,” some men thwart the will of God through their own disbelief and others through walking away from that saving faith. However, sometimes it is the actions of others; others for not going and telling the lost of the saving knowledge of Christ, and worse yet, still others for driving the lost away from the saving knowledge of Christ. Could it be that we do not and cannot truly “love the Lord with all of our heart” until we indeed “love our neighbors as ourselves?”

It’s a tough word, a tough teaching, and absolute impossible to apply in our lives outside of the power of the Holy Spirit. And Christ angered the Pharisees when he said it just as much as it angered them that he would sit in the local bar with the tax collectors and sinners.