Ok, so here is another one of my little analogies that has something to do with the Church and some of the things that it is doing. This one actually came to me last night before I went to sleep when I was camping. It's interesting how a vacation and especially camping (although not that rustic) but I did sleep in a tent, can revive you and remind you that everything in the world is not as terrible as it may seem to be. I sometimes seem to reach this point where living in the world too much and worrying about the state of things can be sort of annoying. It's nice to just step back and take a look at the whole process. I'm not sure if that really made a lot of sense but it's what came out and I'm not going to change it.
But anyways back to the idea of the post. Here is my not so profound idea. We are taught to be fishers of men, but we need to make sure the bait in the live well doesn't die. If we are to have a church that creates people (bait) which are able to go out and feed the people who need the gospel we need to make sure that they dont die before they get there. To me the church does have the job to go out and take the word to the world but there is also the need to make sure that members who have heard that word continue to grow. Recently there has been a lot of talk about the amount of people levaing some of the more liberal denominations. One thing that I see in some of these denominations or non-denominations is that once the members of the church enter it they tend to not grow much more due to the focus of the church. When a church is more concerned about just bringing in the people rather than helping to nurture and grow their members the members lose spiritually. Thus people getting tired of this type of thing are moving back to the conservative denominations that talk about sin and the law along with an emphasis on the gospel. To me people are wanting to learn more than a lot of these denominations are offering past the surface.
If the bait is dead then there will be no way to bring in the fish. But if we are able to keep the bait alive while they are doing the work then the harvest will be much more effective
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1 comment:
Andrew,
The "bait" is the Gospel, and there is nothing we can do to add to that. Speak of Christ crucified and the Holy Spirit will do His work. The duty of the Christian is to speak the gospel to terrified sinners. John 6:44 "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day."
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