Reading Time: 2:45
As churches age they seem to lose their eyesight in much the same way that we do when we age physically. I remember the first time I felt that my eyes weren’t as good as they were. I was under a car working on it and I couldn’t get my head far enough away to see the bolts.
It’s funny how things like this creep up on you and you ignore it. That is, until you don’t pass your driver’s license exam. Yeah, now you need glasses to bring things back into view. Apart from a miracle of God you will continue to need glasses with increasing strength the rest of your life. Same for churches. I new church bears an excitement that an aging church can never seem to recover. We’ve often likened it to a nursery turning into a nursing home. What once had constant, vibrant change, struggles to keep things the same as much as possible. You don’t want to wake those taking a nap.
However, there is another way to lose focus. It means to become distracted. Today it seems like many churches are losing their focus, young and old alike. They are focusing on the things that are going on in the world and not the things taking place in the spirit. We are even turning to the world's ways to solve social problems. The church has become focused on social action, much like the culture around us—“If they can do it we can too.”
That’s not true. We do not wage war like the world does. We are not about changing culture through laws or reform. We are about changing people’s lives through bringing them to faith in Jesus Christ. The moment we stand up for what is right in our eyes is when we join the fray of voices demanding an audience. What a low state we fall to when the world dictates the responses of the church.
May we regain our focus before it’s too late. God is calling the church to repentance and asking us to do our “first works” over again. Changing hearts through salvation is the only hope this world has. Then, no matter what the world does, we will live free under the covering of the Holy Spirit.
Is it too much to ask, or do we feel we can have a greater impact through political and social means than to preach the gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ? May God place the salve of healing on our eyes and change our hearts so the focus of our lives (and our churches) is on glorifying him and making his salvation known to the ends of the earth. Therein is where I stand on all of this craziness in the world—and in the church.
Pastor Brian Jenkins
Calvary Assemblies of God