What Is Church For?

I googled the number of Christian radio stations in new jersey. There were 17. Now I have no clue how many are evangelical, but Belgium has none.

I googled SBC churches in South Jersey, there were 27. Flanders, which is the region in which Gent is, has no SBC churches and only 10-12 evangelical churches. The largest of which is less than 100.

Why should NJ have so many opportunities and places to hear the Gospel when Belgium has so few? And that doesn't even begin to compare with China, Laos, Nigeria. We can do both national and international missions.

 

To defuse this growing tension, there is room for missionaries everywhere, at home (Jerusalem) across our nation (Judea) into nearby nations, like Canada and Central America (Samaria) and to the rest of the world (uttermost parts...).

It is not either/or, but both/and.

I am originally from Wisconsin, and in that state, 2/3s of the counties have no SBC work (the denomination that I am most familiar with) and 1/3 of the counties have no evangelical presence of any sort. That is a horrific failure of the mission call of the local church, who could have, by now, extended its presence into at least one location in every county. In some areas, the total number of evangelized persons runs at 3%. We are sending missionaries overseas to areas that are much more heavily evangelized than that!

Yet, there are unreached people groups in places all over the world, some of which have utterly NO gospel witness, and God has placed the clarion call into the hands of His church to go into "all the world" and just like we have failed in our Jerusalem and Judea, we have also failed in our Samaria and uttermost places.

Interestingly, I keep finding people that expect some special call of God to be involved in a missions venture, no matter where. That is a foreign concept to the Scriptures, which present the mission call to ALL of God's people as a continual command to go. Our option is not to go or not go, but only to go where, and the answer to that is "everywhere" until Christ returns for His bride, the church.

Edit: Oh, and I just found out that I will be returning to Wisconsin. I've been offered a job in Milwaukee, and that means that the next step in my call to spread the gospel in the Great Lakes region is about to begin. I knew that God was moving when He started re-arranging our lives. Out of the blue, I was released from my job and given 6 weeks to find alternative work. I knew then that it was time to move forward and we had been praying for some time, and it seems that now the time is right. We also found a great bargain in a used (barely) laptop that is modern enough to handle church work. Didn't know why that fell into our laps, but a short 3 days later I found out. I'll be using it while I'm on the road. Next comes nailing down a place to live, a ministry field, then connecting with the local association and either taking a bi-vocational church or starting one. Don't know that yet, but God will show us that as well.

 

I have a related question about the local churches. Do we try to operate our local assemblies as NT churches and ignore modernity, or do we make our local assemblies allow for modernity?

We can crawl into the NT community, first century, and ignore modern times, but would we then be reaching out to these lost souls?

Cheers,

Jim

 

Good question, Jim. Seeing as how we don't actually live in the 1st (33rd, or otherwise) century, perhaps we should focus on carrying the un-changing message, but not the culture into a world that would be unrecognizable to the people of the times when the OT or NT was written.

In missiology terms that is called "contextualization." It is the act of speaking the gospel (which does not change) into a people that do, in a manner that they can hear.

I often draw on an anecdotal incident to illustrate this point. If one goes to a place like India and begins working to share the gospel with the people, there are a number of ways that one might proceed with that task. One of those ways is to speak of "eternal life" in Christ. In so doing, one would find his or her audience rejecting the message out of hand because in that culture and worldview, "eternal life" is seen as THE thing to avoid at all cost, for it is the eternal re-cycling of pain and suffering that make up the reincarnated portion of their life, including the concept of binding one into a caste system to atone for some earlier life experience, hence the great press for Nirvana, which is not "eternal life" as seen by Christians, but the opposite, a dissolving into nothingness -- finally. In that case, missions persons who share the gospel in India and other like-minded peoples, should start (and do start) with another aspect of the gospel, i.e., the release from slavery, acceptance, justification, etc. No part is eliminated in the process, but the starting point is contextualized so the people will actually hear the message. We find the Apostle Paul using this technique always in Acts and in his epistles, but there is not a "proof text" to hang one's hat on concerning the issue (save, "all things to all people...").

 

Outstanding!

 

Thanks! :thumbsup:

 

Americans 1st! If I was a Laotian the 1st thing Id ask you is how much of your own country is Christian. If you give me some lame answer like you just did, personally Id laugh at you & tell you to go home, Who are you to come to my house when yours isnt in order. Least thats the way I think.

Lastly, let me know about north Jersey not south Jersey....two different states.:tongue3:

 

Good thing the church in Jerusalem didn't think that way or we'd never have heard about Jesus.

btw, I don't feel any tension from you. I hope you don't feel any from me. I understand what you're saying but don't agree.

okay I searched for SBC churches within 20 miles of Newark, NJ. Here's the list. There were 225 churches.

 

you consider Newark North Jersey.....from lots of the churches are in inner cities...most I would not touch & Id have to drive far to get to plus you got some outa state.

Take a look at this & tell me what you think

http://www.liquidchurch.com/locations/morristown/

 

My point wasn't that the churches were all what you are looking for. I know they're not. My point is that in most countries throughout the world they don't have anywhere near the number of churches in the whole country.

Liquid church wouldn't be what I was looking for in a church. But FBC, osprey probably wouldn't be what they were looking for in a church either.

Sorry J of J, I have probably diluted this thread without meaning to.

 

I wish I had time to interact with everything you've written here, but we have to buy a new (used) car all of a sudden, along with getting ready for furlough, and I've been crushed by red tape for several days now.

The short answer is that I differentiate clearly and literally between the kingdom of God and the local church, and don't believe they are equivalent. I believe I've discussed the universal church before, so I won't go there.

This is a good point. I think part of our disagreement is that we've not been defining "developing relationships" in the same way. You appear to give the phrase a much broader meaning than I do.

The fact that Christ gave as the two Great Commandments love for God and our neighbor means that I agree with you more than you think here. But I would still like to see a "smoking gun" passage on the purpose of the church in your belief.

I think I would surprise you in this area if you really knew me. I recently preached for a wonderful Japanese pastor friend down in Sapporo who has a "seeker" type service after his regular service, a "Gospel Service" complete with electric guitars, a drum set, etc. I was privileged to give the Gospel message in that service. He has a growing, vibrant church with folk being saved all the time, and I commend him. In fact, he's tentatively asked and I've tentatively agreed to teach Greek to his young preachers after our furlough. I look forward to working with him more in the future.

 

Hilarious and sad at the same time. I know people exactly like that.

 

I get it... My own time here on the board is about to get seriously curtailed, as I have to get things rolling for a move to Wisconsin RIGHT NOW. I shouldn't even be here now, but I wanted to tie up a few threads before shutting down for a while.

I know your stance and disagree.

I do, and after a LOT of searching for God's patterns, types, and "big picture" by repeated readings of the entire Bible. Best way to exemplify the entirety of God's purpose in short order is to grasp that 1 John is God's letter concerning His heart for true relationship -- the type that we were created to have when all in creation was yet "very good" and modeled after the response we see before His throne in Revelation. All else between those bookends is description of sinful mankind, God's work at redeeming that sinful mankind, and prescriptions for how we should walk, believe, test and trust God, etc., so that we can finally be counted in the restoration of God's magnificent and original plan, which will not be thwarted by this brief interlude caused by one enemy, who in turn brought sin into the world.

In a sense, we were created to love (agape) perfectly in both directions, and we will once again, because of the redemption that is ours in Christ, do so without end. Lots of ramifications involved with seeing God's purpose in that light, but it fits better than many other attempts to figure out what God is doing and it is thoroughly Scriptural, save for that we have all been trained to see things otherwise. Some down through the ages have touched on the subject, so this is not some new theological creation of mine, but rather a setting aside of a priori conceptions of God's work that have their framework solely in some systematic theology that may or may not present a unified look at the ultimate purpose of God.

So, you look for a proof text? I submit as my proof text the entire Bible. Underlying virtually every passage in Scripture is the great love that God has for us (admitting that He hates darkness and sin) and the great love that God calls us to have for each other. It is everywhere in the text, and can be "proof-texted" but why when it is one of the overwhelming themes of Scripture alongside His kingdom and His mission and His glory!

Awesome!

 

I trust you will have a great, safe move, and the Lord will use you in Wisconsin. It's a good state. Dad pastored in Racine when I was in high school, and I got my MA in Watertown at Maranatha Baptist Bible College, where our son also took two degrees.

I have this odd quirk. I just like to have the Bible say "church" or "churches" when it is talking about the church. Maybe I can get over it...but I doubt it. :smilewinkgrin: