My brother Deal loves to quote A.W. Tozer who once said “you win them to what you win them with.”
The basic idea behind the quote is that you’ll have to continue to provide whatever you first did to get people to join you.
I’m sitting in our living room right now and was about to write a couple blogs about all of the crazy connections God has been making down here to meet multiple needs of some precious kids down here. I was rifling through thoughts about everything that has been going on and the craziness that seems to be my life at the moment…
The words of one of my world race buddies echo’s through my head…”just make sure you don’t get too busy to see Jesus…” That seems like such an absurd thought considering His fingerprints are all over EVERYTHING down here. Then, I stop and breathe and think. When my heart stills I smile and remember to breathe deeply of something that is simple and refreshing. He’s right. He’s doing so much that it’s ironically possible to keep my fixed on the things He’s doing instead of the one doing them.
So I decided to sit back and soak in a bit of some of Kari Jobe’s music while reclining in my chair. There is just a sweetness in the room right now and it feels good to just sit in it.
Meanwhile one of the participants is discussing his first day and the surprise he found when he returned to the church that they went to earlier in the morning. Pastor Mercy said he could get maybe 75 kids together for an afternoon VBS. The participants were pleasantly surprised that the pastor could get so many kids together on a moments notice…then they showed up 🙂 Haha!! Standing there to greet them were over 160 kids with their smiling faces.
The participant makes a comment that mega-churches would love this kind of initial turnout…
…and my mind flashes back to the States and the way we often do things. So often we set up huge events full of entertainment to draw people’s attention. We have bands or games or give-aways or crafts or food and drinks or a plethera of other little tricks to get the masses in…Then we mix in the message of Jesus with a good experience and hope they leave with a positive impression of the church and Jesus. Do we realize that we’ll have to keep up the entire show and even make it bigger to keep them there? We win them with entertainment so we’ll have to entertain to keep them…
What if all we had were words of truth and lives of love?
A place where you could be yourself as long as you weren’t willing to stay where you are at?
A place where you could be yourself as long as you weren’t willing to stay where you are at?
What if we were simply honest with each other?
What if there were no gimmics?
What if it was worship from the heart instead of big names?
What if we focused on giving something of worth instead of focusing our efforts on geting them there?
What if people just showed up?
Would we know how to simply just lay out truth for them?
Offensive or not?
Hard or not?
What if we actually believed in the power of God?
What if we believed that He actually transforms lives?
Lives of addicts…
Lives of prostitutes…
Lives of homeless…
Lives of orphaned and widowed…
Lives of the sick…
He came to heal the sick…what if we had the honesty to admit that we’re all sick?
Are people following you?
Are you leading them to Christ or are you leading them after yourself?
If it takes more and more of yourself to keep them, you might want to have a gut check.
