Everywhere you look, there are people. Yet, surprisingly we ministers fret about losing people, even more oddly we compete to draw them to our own franchise, read local church. Note this, the world is FULL of people, so much so that governments keep trying to cut down on stocks aka family planning etc. Despite all our efforts, more keep coming to earth daily. The one thing we will never run out of is people stock. God keeps making them. In essence we are in a trade where the market is forever growing.
Some may say, well, there are more people on the earth, but they do not believe in God. Precisely, quite paradoxically, the more ungodly the world becomes the more room there is for us to do our thing. The problem is we have been so used to preaching to the choir, converting the converted and doing our histrionics before a pliant crowd that we have forgotten the injonction of the Master to go into the entire world and make disciples. We are to go to those who do not want God, love God or care for the thought of God and make them disciples, not hide among our fawning flock and acquire titles.
We fret and fight and do unrighteous things to either keep from losing people or to attract them from their current churches because we are functional deists, we do not believe that God will move on people’s hearts and bring them into the kingdom. We do not believe that Jesus will do what He said, build the church, we think our own franchise will fall apart if we do not use underhand methods to ensure its survival.
Perhaps we fret and fight also because we are on our own mission, not the mission of God and our self esteem is tied to the number of people who come to hear us on Sunday; we do not have a heart for God’s kingdom, only our own.
Jesus the revolutionary instructed us to go and change the hearts and minds of people and bring them to God and train them to obey Him, not to cajole and counsel to death those who know Him well enough to get on their own knees and pray. If the gospel is true, it will engage men’s hearts and respond to their deepest aspirations, but to so do, they must hear it. Could it be that while we build our kingdoms, the overall kingdom of God lies neglected?