Unbalanced Priorities

A major reason why we don’t reach the unchurched is because the priorities of the American Church are all out of whack. Let me give you an example.

One of my good friends is an international speaker. He has spoken in American Churches thousands of times. “When I ask for funds for my overseas work, they throw money at me,” he said to me, “but when I attempt to raise funds for my work here in the United States, their eyes glass over. I spend ten percent of my time raising money for my overseas work, and that amounts to ninety percent of my total budget for the year. I spend the other ninety percent of my time raising money for my work in the States and that ends up being only ten percent of my total budget. They are not interested in giving to reach the people at home for Christ.”

Well, that’s just crazy . . . but true!

It’s kind of like caring for the orphans, but neglecting your own children.

America is one of the most difficult mission fields on the face of the earth. It’s far easier to reach people in third world countries. On a mission trip to a third world country, our team put up black and white posters on telephone poles announcing the crusade. 4000 people gathered to hear the gospel. If we were to do the same thing in the United States, we might draw twenty people. Americans have so many great events to go to that your advertising has to be the very best in order to get them to the event.

In his book How To Multiply Your Church, Ralph Moore reports that there are over 25 million people in the United States who have never heard the Gospel. Did you get that? 25 MILLION PEOPLE! Ed Stetzer, in his book Planting Missional Churches, writes that the United States is the fifth largest mission field in the world! David T. Olson, in his book The American Church In Crisis, says that the American church did not grow between 1990 and 2006. It stayed the same.

That is because the sum total of missions in America is “Come to our church!” The church does not understand that hardcore unchurched people, who comprise well over half of the population, are not going to darken the door of a church building. During a conference I attended in Tacoma, Washington, a seasoned church planter told us that church plants in America are comprised almost entirely of backslidden Christians. Almost never do they get a hardcore unchurched person. So . . . who is reaching the hardcore unchurched, over half of America’s population? I don’t know. Probably, no one! The American church is stuck on, “Come to our church.”

Read my lips: The hardcore unchurched are not coming! 

Morris Cerullo was flying over the United States on his way to  a third world country when the Lord asked him, “Why are you flying over the mission field to get to the mission field?”

Countless churches have strong foreign missions works, but they can’t reach the people within a stone’s throw of their church.

I lost just about everything I owned trying to reach the young people of America, including my farmland inheritance, my house, my loved ones, and my car. In addition I found myself in major debt. The reason was that it was so difficult to raise funds. Many people, when I would ask them for money, put me under deep scrutiny. I really got tired of being cross examined. In one of these sessions, I just lost it. “Americans are so selfish,” I said. “Only six percent of church people tithe. At the same time Americans spend a trillion dollars a year on recreation. It’s a wonder God can get anything done through us. We are going to have a lot to answer for on the judgment day.”

He was quite taken aback. He promptly got up, went to get his check book, and wrote me a check.

After one of my events reached a city in a dramatic way, reaching about 23,000 people, I asked a church for support to continue in other cities. I was told the missions director would not support me because I didn’t qualify as a missionary. My work was not overseas, you see.

Ridiculous, you say! I thought so!

Roughly two thousand years has passed since the Apostle Peter preached on the day of Pentecost and three thousand people were saved. The church was born and immediately Jesus’ followers began doing what He told them to do, preach the gospel to every creature. The apostles spent almost all of their time sharing the good news.

They didn’t have any church buildings because they were persecuted and had to stay underground. They always found places to meet. Honestly, building a church building to have church in, probably never occurred to them. “Why would we do a thing like that? Why do we need a church building? We are supposed to be out among the people, not holed up in a church building.”

Roughly 300 years later, the first Christian emperor, Constantine, decided that Christians should have a building, which he named the church. Over the next seventeen hundred years, the body of Christ gradually moved out of the world and into the church building, holing up in their bunker, hardly venturing out to share the gospel at all. Some research has shown that about three percent of American Christians share their faith with unbelievers.

And that’s where we are today. What will it take to awaken the American church out of her deep sleep, to again live and breath the unstoppable passion of the early church? America Christians need to get out of the church building to reach the unchurched and to stop expecting the unchurched to come into their church building.

Log in next week for the next installment, posted right here!

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine