Time Slots

I have found myself asking this question recently: Is a series of 20 minute get togethers enough to be able to know someone? It may even be the same 20 minute setting every week, but if it’s online, and because of the way we ‘feel’ about the video or podcast, are we really that much closer to what that person is like during the other 23+ hours of the day?

When you were young, and maybe you still are, you deliberately took as much time as possible, over a long period, to get to know the love of your life. If you relied on the same 20 minutes, once a week, at the same time, do you think that would give you enough information to decide if you wanted to marry, and spend the rest of your life together? Not to mention commit yourself to all the financial and emotional needs?

The internet is a minefield, and I’m sure you already know that. But how seriously do we take some things that are said there, especially when they are said with some authority and conviction? I have learned recently, that a short 20 minute sermon is not enough to form a correct and accurate opinion of someone, and even more so if that time is pulled down from an untrusted website.

Like it or not, we can all crave a Godly figurehead that we can respect and look up to. We want to believe them when they preach, but does that short window give us enough time to throw our lot in with them, perhaps calling them our ‘example’, ‘mentor’, ‘teacher’, or even ‘Pastor’? There are many self proclaimed Bible preachers on TV and the internet who command a large following, and for many it’s all down to the 20 minute sermons they preach.

Some followers don’t even live in the same country as their leaders. So, when your life is falling apart and you need a counsellor, can you ask them to drop in and pray? If a loved one is at death’s door, who will be there with you to comfort? If you want your baby to be dedicated, will your distant ‘Pastor’ perform that sacrament for you? Marry you? Bury you? Who do you fellowship with, and who do you give your tithe and offering to? And the list goes on.  

It concerns me greatly that some very well educated, clever Christians are sucked into the ‘online church’ because it tickles their ears with what they want to hear, at least for 20 minutes a time. Is that really what is intended in Hebrews 10:24-25 by “ And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”?

Tell Them

But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? Romans 10:14 NLT

The true story is told of an executive at a critical meeting, when faced with a dilemma, said: “Somebody, somewhere should do something about this, and it’s not me.” We can take that attitude right into church, can’t we? So, who is going to be the Gospel to the unchurched, unsaved, and don’t care generation?

There are two ways to be faced with the Gospel. In church, and in our lives outside church. We take it for granted that the gospel is preached by our pastor, minister, leader, but is this always true? There is a clear and present danger that some churches are fudging the gospel message to make it pleasing to our ears, so that we don’t unnecessarily upset or alarm anyone. After all, the last thing we would want is to annoy folks so that they won’t come back.

As we read the Gospels and the exploits of the early church, most, if not all conversions were made outside the church buildings. Whether singly, or in great groups of people, the gospel message was given clearly, and in an unmistakable way. Did the early church leaders worry about offending the sensitive ears of their listeners? No, because they already knew that the gospel WAS an offence to them. It didn’t stop the message going out, and guess what? The church grew massively, and quickly. After 2,000+ years, we are the result, so why should we entertain anything less in our witness and preaching today?

The pure, life changing gospel is not for the faint hearted, and our churches are not growing because we have deserted it and opted for a ‘soft gospel’ version of our own making. I suggest if the Church of Jesus Christ is to grow in the hearts and minds of people today, it may not be as a result of being in church. It will be because we, that’s you and me individually, will ‘walk the walk’ so that Jesus is seen clearly to those who don’t know Him, or want Him. Then maybe church would be an option.