Ready, Aim, Fire

By: Randal Myers

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In his book, The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren recounts seeing a Peanuts cartoon in which Charlie Brown is practicing archery in his backyard. Instead of aiming at a target, he would shoot an arrow at his fence. Then he would go over and draw a target around wherever his arrow stuck. Lucy walked over and said, ìWhy are you doing this, Charlie Brown?î He replied, ìThis way I never miss.î

Well, I guess Charlie Brown was right; using his method every shot is a great success. Is it possible that the church is guilty of that sort of logic? It's easy to fall into a pattern of planning an event, taking the people who show up, drawing a circle around them and saying, ìYep that was a success.î If the truth were known, most churches don't really know who came to an event. The success is judged only by the attendance total.

I grew up in Alabama, a child of the late 50's, and remember that ìgospel meetingsî were the rule of the day. Most churches would have at least one each year. The purpose was to spread the gospel message to the lost. My family went to every gospel meeting we could possibly attend and in Montgomery there were lots of opportunities. In the early days, I would often witness visitors hear the gospel preached for the first time in one of these meetings and see them make a decision to follow Christ before the week was out. I witnessed lots of baptisms in gospel meetings. Success was determined by the number of conversions.

We want to hit the bull's-eye!

But things began to shift. The number of visitors from the community dramatically declined over the years so naturally the number of responses declined. By the time the 70's rolled around, the number of people being baptized at a gospel meeting was a rare occurrence. But the meetings continued. The success of the meetings was now gauged, not by the number of baptisms, but by the number in attendance. And who were these people in attendance? Largely they were Christians from other congregations coming to support a sister church. So what about the success rate? We simply drew a circle around the attendance records, called it our target and declared success. Now there's nothing wrong with putting on an event to strengthen and edify the church...a worthy pursuit for sure, but what happened to evangelism?

We began to hear things said like, ìPeople just don't want to hear the truth any moreî or, ìFolks just don't care about spiritual things like they used to.î But that's simply not true. The message of the love of God and salvation through Jesus is relevant in any culture at any time and to every person. It is simply a matter of ìtargetingî the intended audience and presenting the message in a way in which they can and will identify. It is no different than going into a foreign country for mission work. It wouldn't make sense to go to Brazil and try to communicate in English. You have to present the message in Portuguese if you want the people to get it. We must learn to ìspeak the languageî of today's American culture if we want to have an effect on those in our community.

This is why we are moving forward with our plans here at Highlands to construct an additional facility on our property and to add children's minister. We believe that these assets will enhance our ability to communicate the love of Christ to the communities around us in a manner that effectively speaks to them.

And we are moving forward! Even though you haven't seen dirt moved yet or a flood of candidates coming through for the ministry position, don't assume that nothing is being done. A lot is underway in both of these efforts and you will see some specific evidence soon. But we must take the time to do it right. We must all be patient with the process. We urge everyone to be in fervent prayer. If we pray diligently, seek to be guided by God, accept his time table and put forth our best efforts we will find true success. To fire without being ready and taking careful aim would only result in a random shot. For the sake of the Kingdom, we want to hit the bull's-eye!

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