Kingdom Thinking

We live in an imperfect world, and we operate within an imperfect church. We must understand that the church has many flaws, because after all, it is made up of imperfect people.

Some years ago, I knew someone who every few months would change churches. He had found something wrong, you see, with the church he was attending, and would move to another one, only in a short time to find something wrong with that one, too.

“Sooner or later,” I said to a friend, “he’s going to figure out that there is no perfect church.”

Some of the things we do as the church of America, costs the Lord converts to Christianity. It is a tragedy, but we are human, are we not?

I must address an issue that keeps people from knowing the Lord, because, after all, if there are things that keep unbelievers from coming to Christ, we must address those issues. The Apostle Paul tells us to examine ourselves. He also wrote a lot about the right ways to do ministry, and the wrong ways.

What would happen if pastors and Christian workers would endeavor to bring unbelievers into the kingdom, and not try to badger them into a specific church?

I can sight many instances as I was doing a city-wide event, when the egos and ambitions of pastors and ministry leaders drastically interfered with people coming to Christ.

Unfortunately, the aim and focus of many pastors is to build their own kingdom and fill their own pews, rather than to grow the kingdom of God. Is this Biblical? Is it what we are supposed to be doing?

To be fair, Pastors have one of the hardest jobs on the planet. In addition, there is a lot of pressure on them to grow their church. If they don’t, they may be out of a job.

Still, there is a better way, and I think, a higher way than building our own personal kingdoms.

A few years ago, I visited a church in Midland, Michigan, and I found an astoundingly different model from what is normal for most churches. The main focus of the pastors of that church was the community . . . going out into the community and bringing people to Jesus. The head pastor said, “I don’t care if they ever come through my sanctuary. I just want them to come to Jesus!”

At the time, I was having discussions with a ministry head in the same city, who went to another church. My concern was that we in America are only concerned with growing our church, instead of bringing people to Jesus and discipling them wherever they are comfortable. That could be in a coffee shop, in a home, or some other meeting place other than a church building. Soon after these discussions, he said to me, “You know, I never noticed it before, but my pastor, when he speaks of bringing people to Christ, it always includes bringing them into our church building . . . ‘bringing them here,’ he says.”

By contrast, my pastor of 25 years once told me an “earthshaking principle” God had taught him. I say “earthshaking” because it is! If we all practiced this principle, I am convinced we would win more people to Christ, exponentially.

He was getting ready to move his congregation of 400 from the existing church building to his new church building across the street that held 2500. It was a big leap, and a scary one, at that.

He said that during the time up to the move, his congregation was decreasing in size. He dreaded coming to church, because it seemed every Sunday, someone would tell him that they were leaving. They were all amicable reasons . . . job transfers, retirement to a warmer climate, things like that. When he went to prayer about the situation, the Lord told him something very simple. “Son, if you’ll build my kingdom, I’ll build your church.”

Pastor Denyes took on a posture of kingdom thinking. Do the things that are good for God’s kingdom at large, not just for your church, which can become you own little kingdom. Pastor Denyes began building the kingdom of God, and guess what? God filled up his new sanctuary of 2500.

Several years later, Pastor Denyes announced from the pulpit that Steve, one of the associate pastors, was leaving to pastor a church a few miles away. “If you feel led to go with Pastor Steve to his new church, by all means do,” Pastor Denyes said. I was an elder in the church at the time, and I never forgot that day. I thought, “Wow, it takes a lot of guts to make such an unselfish statement.”

At the Bemidji, Minnesota Rise Up America event in 2002, I was amazed at the attitude of the altar workers. Some from different churches were in a group discussing the commitment cards of people who had given their lives to Christ. One worker said to another, “This person would be a better fit for your church,” and she gave the card to the worker. Such unselfishness is very unusual, but it is also the attitude and climate in which the Spirt of God can work in a mighty way.

In another city, our event sent multiple speakers to speak in schools. Many of the school officials asked after the event if we were going to do it again. When doing another event was discussed, however, the pastor of one large church said, “We don’t want to do it again, because it didn’t benefit us.”

What blatant selfishness! You don’t want to minister in the schools at large because, you didn’t gain enough new attendees to your church? Whose fault is that? And isn’t ministering to the unchurched the greatest opportunity for the church? The doors to the pubic schools were wide open!

Honestly, folks! How can the church move ahead with such whacked out thinking?

Many unchurched people are turned off big time, because there is often such obvious compulsion on the part of the church to get them into their building. If we really carried the heart of Jesus, we would want to lead people to salvation, and then help them to grow in any location they are comfortable in.

The heart of Jesus is that the lost would come home and become part of the kingdom of God at large. That needs to be our focus, not to add numbers to our own, sometimes selfish little kingdom, our church.

Photo was designed and taken by Lorraine

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