The Partial Path to Christ-likeness

I have a question for you if you are a Christ follower. Is your faith centered on your church, its members, and its building?

I have noticed two things I see the modern method of American Christianity doing that I am not sure it even realizes it is doing. The first is to center the focus of our faith on the church. It does this by focusing all it does on itself. The things it participates in that are outside the church are still focused on getting people to the church building on a set day of the week. Does this describe your faith experience? Is it centered on serving and ministering to the lost in your community as you share the gospel?

The second thing I have noticed is that many ministries are focused on getting people “saved”. The majority of the time, talent and treasure are placed on getting people to church where they can hear the gospel and respond in faith. Its what comes next that I have noticed is odd.

Does your church take the next step as being one of connecting them to the church body? Or does it give them a clear path to walking out their gift and passion in public service? If it does the second choice then you would know because someone would have sat you down and said something like – “Now that you are a follower of Christ here is how you go from new birth to full maturity and actively use your spiritual gift to grow the kingdom.”

The sad truth is that many ministries today hope that the second part just happens. There is no plan to take the average convert from new birth to maturity. That is one reason it takes so many years for Christians to mature in the American church. Instead of making disciples we are focused on making converts that will become members of our church. This distorts our God designed purpose of being disciple makers in a fallen world to becoming passive participants in a church system. So Sad!