Helping people take the NEXT STEP in their relationship with JESUS

Lately, I have been rethinking and questioning the purpose and mission of a follower of Jesus and the responsibility of being apart of his church. I just finished a book called “unchristian” by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. The book reveals recent research about non-Christian’s perceptions of Christians. The results sadden me. As I thought about the responses, I began to think about 2 Corinthians 5:20. The scripture says that we are Jesus’ ambassadors, that we are His representatives. The results that were gathered from the research in this book show that we are doing a very poor job of representing Jesus to the world around us. The Jesus that I read about in the Bible is loving, forgiving, exciting, caring, and relevant.
When we address issues such as homosexuality, we come across as angry and judgmental. Although I strongly agree that homosexuality is a sin, I do not believe Jesus would verbally attack those who are struggling with homosexuality. I don’t believe that he would preach sermons where he rants and raves about how evil homosexuality is. I don’t believe that he would protest at gay parades with signs that say “God hates gays” or “All gays go to hell”. I believe that he would engage the lives of homosexuals with compassion.
We seem afraid to address the real issues that the world is facing. We seem to be content with telling everyone everything that they are doing wrong and broadcasting everything that we are against. We come across as hypocritical because we act like we have it all together when it is obvious to non-Christians that we don’t.
When we read 2 Corinthians 5:16-20 and Colossians 1:19-20 we find that our mission and message is that of “reconciliation”. The word reconciliation basically means “to bring into proper relationship”. Our mission and message is to help people come into proper relationship with God. According to this research we are actually pushing people away from a proper relationship with God by the way we are responding to the issues that our culture is facing.
We are not only supposed to help bring people into proper relationship with God, we are also supposed to “reconcile all things”. According to Colossians 1:20 Jesus died on the cross to bring “all things” into proper relationship with God. We often forget that when sin entered the world, it threw all of creation out of proper relationship with God. That is why there is hunger, poverty, homelessness, sex-trafficking, abuse, corruption, disease, divorce, natural disasters, etc… The church has been strangely absent from doing much about these issues. We gather at our churches on Sundays and Wednesdays and talk about how bad the world is and how it needs Jesus, but we do nothing. No wonder the world sees us the way they do. From their perspective all we want are more converts to add to our roles so we can brag about how many people we baptized at the next denominational meeting. Our message and mission in not just to “get people saved”. Although evangelism is important. Our mission and message is to “reconcile all things”. That means that when we see things in our world that are not as God intended them to be, we should act.

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
–2 Corinthians 5:16-20 19

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. –Colossians 1:19-20