Back To Church Initiative
I have just been reading about the ‘Back to Church’ initiative, which is held on the 27th September this year.
The plan is for church goers to invite folks to a service who used to attend church, but now don’t. I saw this described as ‘one of the largest ecumenical evangelism events staged across Britain.’
There is a website dedicated to this cause Back to Church
Whilst I do applaud this idea and hopefully it will bear fruit, I think I struggle with the definition of ‘evangelism event’. I have read quite recently that a substantial percentage of Christians don’t attend church for various reasons and if it is these folks that are being targeted, then I don’t think this could be called ‘evangelism’, perhaps a better term ‘churchelism’ (just made that up).
If the type of folks targeted are non-believers then I sincerely hope that the ‘true’ unadulterated, powerful Gospel message, will be preached to them. Sadly from my own experience this is not always the case and if this is not done then it certainly won’t be an ‘evangelism’ event, more a ‘come back to the social club’ event.
I personally wouldn’t of been seen dead in a church before I was a Christian (Ironically I suppose that dead would have been my only time in a church). It took the Jehovah Witnesses to bang on my door and introduce me to the Bible, for me to realise that the Bible was not written by man but written by God. I won’t go into the lengthy story here, but suffice it to say that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit I was led to see that the Jehovah Witnesses were themselves in error and landed in a good local Anglican church.
A quick aside on the Jehovah witnesses, God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.
Now as I said I wouldn’t have even darkened the door of a church before my conversion and the irony is that I lived one street from the church I eventually attended and had done all my life and they had a full time paid evenagelist from the London City Mission. He had never banged on my door and as it happens, in my case, thank God the Jehovah Witnesses did.
Today’s church thinks that evangelism is to say to folks ‘come’, but in actually fact Jesus told the church to ‘go’ and preach the message.
Why would folks be interested in church if they are not Christian. I used to describe church as the only place where time moved more slowly than work….and that was as a Christian.
The church needs to ‘go’ and evangelise and that includes on the Internet and I can help you with that, so you have no excuse.
Sorry to be so hard on this topic, it’s not like me, I just feel a little passionately and I am as guilty as the next man!
Blessings Webmaster
Tags: Church Life