Tailgate Back to Church

Tomorrow September 21st from 9:30 to noon we are welcoming all of Monmouth County Back to Church. In Red Bank we are celebrating the day by having a Tailgate party with free food, games, prizes, and an outdoor worship experience. We feel that if folks won't come inside then we need to go outside of the church walls. I encourage all of you to go Back to Church tomorrow!  

What barriers exist in reaching the unchurched in your area? I came across this list recently: 10 reasons the church has not reached the unchurched that addresses some things we should take to heart.

10. We go to churches that do not want to reach the unchurched.

9. Failure to invite.

8. Lack of accountability.

7. Losing the habit of witnessing.

6. A desire to be tolerant.

5. Fear of rejection.

4. Busyness 

3. Growing disbelief in hell.

2. Salvation Confusion.

1. Spiritual lethargy.

This trend can only be reversed through God’s power.

Maybe our thinking and habits need to be changed or modified. What is the difference between a vertical and a horizontal Christ Follower (or Church)? Consider this account from Jesus' life. 

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.  Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.  Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.  One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.  When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”  Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”  At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” John 5:1-10

It's God's power that can change a life - not tradition, rules, or sitting behind closed doors. See you in my church parking lot tomorrow - Jesus will be there and I cannot wait to see what He will do!