I love Mark Beeson
I love to learn from people who have been down the road further than I have travelled (not necessarily by age) and one of my mentors is Mark Beeson the founding pastor at Granger Community Church. I follow his blog as much as do anybodies because I get so much out of it – here was his post from a few days ago!
Five Questions
(pivotally important for a congregation considering radical outreach)
1. Do we want to know them?
Most of our Christians do not fraternize with really unchurched people.
2. Are we willing to go where they are?
Most churches avoid their city’s gathering places, where people engage in conversation and look for Life, lest believers be offended, or even tempted.
3. Are we willing to spend time with them?
Outreach ministry involves scheduled time, and sweat equity.
4. Do we want secular and outside-the-establishment people in our churches?
At least 80% of our churches fail ever to reach out to two groups of people:
(1) people who are not ‘refined’ enough to feel comfortable in church; people who have never acquired a ‘church etiquette’ need not apply;
(2) people whose lifestyles are too different from ours, or whose lives are too ‘
5. Are we willing for our church to become their church too?
A missionary context requires, in at least some services and ministries, that we adapt to the style, the language, the aesthetics and (yes) the music of the people we are called to reach.
1 Corinthians 9:19-23 - “Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized-whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ-but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”
