The link above is to a Phil Wickham song called "True Love" (The Wall), and it's amazing! Right now Nuckolls and I are in
Nashville, TN at the National Youth Workers Convention. It's probably the largest resource convention I've ever seen. There are
some parts of me that dislike things like this. The reason being that while we're in our conventions and little youth retreats,
there are people starving to death, and not hearing the gospel from us (the church), so it upsets me a little. I understand
and support the idea of idea sharing and resource providing, though I think it should come second to being Christ to the world.
I just finished listening to Phil Wickham sing Hallelujah on YouTube.com and it's just amazing. Lincoln Brewster does Another
Hallelujah really well, but as far as the original goes, I'll take Phil's version.
Right now we're trying to setup a Missions Trip to Peru with Summit and it looks like it may work out (it's through IMB). The
leadership of the trip would probably take a "vision trip" down there first to see where we want to commit to ministering for
the next 3-5 years or more as a church. I love the fact of long-term commitment ministry, and I think that it needs to happen
more and more as churches are quickly dying out and being demeaned and forgotten as everyone (unfortunately) will soon
see...it's just not that much in the South right now.
Statistically, 48 churches close their door a week, and that number is only 48 because we plant 24 a week, so as a horrible
mistake on the church it decided to become exclusive and just stop ministering or giving to others as they have need to
become basically a health club, or rather a nursing home for Christians...thus as people are at the age we they are dying at
nursing homes (it's just true...I don't like it either), the church is reaching it's age quickly where it's dying too, however, when a
person's mind goes they forget things (normally around the same age as they are getting close to death)...it's just weird that
the church forgot the teachings of Christ and then God managed to keep it alive for all these years.
The good thing about the churches dying ("rejoice in the Lord always") is that God is refining His church of who is and who is
not a believer (when the first sign of difficulty comes, then you see whose committed to your cause - John Maxwell). Also, the
church (as a whole) should experience a great time of unity within this time frame, and therefore as we've seen in the past
when persecution comes there is unity in the church (read Acts).
Anyways, gotta go work...sorry about the rant, but it's been something that's been talked about a good bit, and I felt like
chiming in (thus a blog...I think that's what they're for).
Nicholas
No comments:
Post a Comment