The Gathering
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Posted by
Andrew
I'm off to Baptist Assembly today and back Sunday afternoon. It's a good chance to catch up with mates and hear what God is doing in churches around the country. I was encouraged by some of the hints Rodney Macaan gave in his annual report after his first year as National Leader of the NZ Baptist Churches. Rodney's major question for churches is "what of our character/conscience?" Studies on the character of Christians today suggest there's little discernable difference between Christians and anyone else. Rodney suggests this is exemplified by the phenomenon of consumer church:
"(Recently I have been interviewed twice about the phenomena of Christians on the move between churches, looking for the next best thing, the ultimate Christian product. It was suggested there could be 10,000 in Auckland alone [!!!]). I believe we have a vision and there is an encouragement to be adventurous but our [NZ Baptist] statistics over recent years show that most of our growth is because Christians like our brand and why shouldn't they - we're great wuth children, have fine youth work, we're reasonably contemporary (in our own way) but what about our character?
Were not bad at meeting our culture but what about the places where we stand against our culture and say through the way we live - 'this is what it means to be a follower of Jesus' and let me hasten to add I don't mean that we stand on street corners and heap judgement on unengaged passers-by, but rather we reflect a true biblical world view which will almost always mean surprising those who don't know Jesus with our capacity to love."
I'm looking forward to hearing what it might look like for us to surprise people who don't know Jesus with our capacity to love - any thoughts...?