I was seriously thinking of attending a conference on the resurgence of the Church to be brought more up to speed on what’s happening in the world of evangelical churches. As I read about the churches and organizations, all of which are evangelical, meaning; they are Bible believing, Gospel preaching, and missional in their vision and ideology, I kept seeing a trend throughout.
A lot of the new, up and coming movements are all about young people; praise God. But, and it may be a weak but, but I can’t help but think that a church that focuses on one group is not necessarily the vision I see set out in the New Testament.
I hear Jesus saying in the Great Commission; “go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” And in Acts, the Apostles did that and brought young and old alike into the Church whether they were Jew or Gentile.
I envision a church to be full of all people; the Jew, the Gentile, light skin, dark skin, male, female, married, widowed, unmarried, workers, employers, rich, poor, young and old.
That’s what I like about our little church, I look around on Sunday morning and see “all” of us praising and worshipping our Great God and Saviour together. Then I finish the message and stand at the back of the church to talk to people and some days I stand there for 10 minutes before anybody leaves. I see everybody connecting; some old with the young, some young with the old, but even when I see a group of old with old, or young with young, that’s great. Build one another up according to their need.
I’m also very much aware that we can improve how we do that as a church and so I am continually seeking God’s wisdom in exactly how that would look for our church family. We can look around and compare but we need to know that not everything out there works in our situation here. Not everything out there is all that it appears.
Let’s look, yes; learn, yes; but copy everything that looks like its working can lead to much disappointment and frustration. My prayer is that we would look to God to find out what He has in mind for our little church and go with that.