Troy Hamby

Jump to Comments

I don’t know, maybe President Obama is inspiring me or something but I really do have hope for the church, deep in my heart. I have hope that we can change…that uncompromising leaders will rise up and lead us in that change despite the consequences…that the “audience” can be turned into the Body and begin to function as the royal priesthood we were called to be…that signs and wonders would again follow those who believe and this generation would see a God who is alive and working through His people!

But, the harsh truth is that this WILL NOT happen by ‘staying the course’ and doing what we are doing now. It will not even happen by us becoming a cooler and more relevent version of us. Just as the current economic collapse is opening our eyes to our present reality, I think God is allowing the church to hemmorage to show us that there is a major issue that must be addressed. If you don’t believe me, check out the state of the church in Europe and you will see a grim picture of what lies ahead for us if we don’t change! So, how can we avoid this? How can we reach this postmodern generation for Christ and make them true disciples, not just church attenders?

I was going to get all theological here, but I want to keep it simple. We need to get back to the mission of God! And what is the mission of God? Jesus proclaimed it loud and proud in Luke 4:17-21 when He said “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor!” This is the dream of God for His people! And this dream requires us to GO!!!! We can’t fulfill this vision sitting in a church service staring at the back of someone else’s head…it will never happen! God is a sending God…He sent Jesus and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is now sending us to be the Body of Christ in this world. But for some crazy reason, we have built modern day temples of brick and mortar and thought that they should come to us instead of us going to them. And IT AIN’T WORKING! I’m not saying that Sunday morning services are wrong and we need to stop but I AM saying that we can’t stop there! Pastors are working so feverishly to get people to “come” to a church building that they have no energy/money left to mobilize them to “go” into the world and reach the harvest…and that’s what’s missing.

We are losing my generation because we have only given them half of the story. We have told them “come to church, invite Jesus into your heart, receive the Holy Spirit and live the joyful, victorious Christian life!” but they find out quickly that something is missing. God is a sending God and we will never be fulfilled or complete until we allow Him to live His sending nature through us. Unfortunately, we have been satisfied with just getting people to come to church but it’s only half the story. Let me make this comparison:

**imagine if you met the woman of your dreams and you fall madly and deeply in love with her and shockingly enough, she loves you too. You begin to date and then become engaged…all the while, you are keeping yourselves pure and beyond reproach when it comes to saving sex for marriage. Then the big day comes…you say I do, party the night away at the reception and whisk your new bride away to your honeymoon. But, imagine if for whatever reason you never consummate the marriage! You decide that you are going to build your marriage on good communication, quality time and words of affirmation. I’m here to tell you brother, you can communicate all you want and go on vacations every other week, but if you aren’t having sex, you are missing the most wonderful part of marriage!!!

That’s what we’ve done with the church. We hype people up, telling them that they will find the fullness of God if they will just “sell out to the vision” of the church and pray and read their Bibles and tithe, but when they do these things, they find there’s something missing. We’ve only given them half the story and have deprived them of the most wonderful part of our relationship with Christ and that’s us joining Him on this missionary journey called life! Pastors, if you read this blog, I beg you to put the ‘attracting’ on hold for a while and let’s get out into the community! Let’s join together as the body of Christ and make a dent in the hunger and poverty that is all around us and in the process I GUARANTEE that you will see your church members come alive and their faith finally gain that vitality they have been searching for.