Fri 2 Dec 2011
The Less Churched
Posted by Christine Parker under Ministry, Pastoral Ministry
[2] Comments
I recently completed a task that involved looking at numerous church websites in order to discover how churches are explaining their faith in the online world.
Format and cool-factor varied tremendously from site to site. What churches chose to write about themselves, their theology and denominational (or lack thereof) disctinctives varied even more.
But one thing remained consistent almost everywhere: the overwhelming use of scripture references.
I love the Bible. I must have 10 personal copies in a variety of translations. I have two iPhone and iPad Bible apps, and I read the Greek New Testament.
I am all about the Bible.
But when our attempts to communicate our faith to the world overwhelms even one who has spent 20 years in ministry, 15 of those in and around graduate level theological education, we might want to stop and ask ourselves whether we are really hitting that nail on the head.
When our first-impression statements to the world about God and His people involve a multitude of scripture references (all of which utilize a code of abbreviations and numbers), we might want to put ourselves for a moment in the shoes of those I call the less-churched (believers who came to faith as teens or adults and missed out on learning the books of the Bible songs) and wonder how our statements come across.
May God teach us to take the gloriously rich and complex knowledge of Him he has so graciously lavished upon us and translate it into the beautiful simplicity that is the Gospel message.
I cannot agree more. At the Randolph Church of Christ, I took our faith statements (which were written in a series of propositions with numerous scriptural references) and turned it into a two paragraph statement without any scriptural references (accept a footnote to say that we believe the Bible is a the true word of God and the standard by which we learn our faith). This was accept but with much criticism. It makes me wonder how we would be able to live as witnesses without the accessibility of the Bible. Some would be clueless.
Great post!
Excellent post. We also need to apply this to our conversations. We often use ‘church lingo’ which leaves the unchurched on the outside. Being spiritual is inward and demonstrated by our actions and backed up with our words.