Little Bo Sheep Without One Peep - the Church

After being out of the local pastorate for about three years now I have new perspectives on ministry. While I gather with the church, the gathering is not my main priority. I do no ministries in the church anymore. I don't preach, or teach, or watch children or lead programs or you name it anymore. I spend all my time in the world living life with people I encounter. It is themost freeing and exciting way to do ministry.

When I gather with my True Vine family I gather with the Church - all of whom are believers. We do not invite pre-Christians to worship - we first invite them to Jesus. When we gather we sing, share, open the Word of God, partake of communion, give our tithes, share a meal together and introduce our new converts. But clearly the worship gathering is not the main thing, sharing Jesus life on life in the world is.

While some have labeled me as down on the church I am really not down on the church I am down on "going to gather" and I'm totally for "gathering to go". Those who oppose me often say they are "gathering to go" and then they do not have any fruit to show for it. As long as we encourage "inviting unbelievers" to worship as the church we will not accomplish believers "inviting unbelievers" to Jesus. Somewhere we went from inviting people to Jesus to now just inviting people to our church.

In America the main thing has become "going to gather" and we just cannot admit that we are not "gathering to go" anymore. Leaders lie to me all the time over this issue and it's like they refuse to face the truth that believers largely are not going into the world to share Jesus anymore. Let me repeat it one more time, "inviting people to church" has largely replaced "inviting people to Jesus".

One of the healthiest things we could do is stop "inviting people to church". The worst thing we ever did was allow the unsaved to worship like saved people. That's one problem and the other is we have replaced Jesus sharing with church sharing. We have become like Little Bo Sheep without one Peep.