Blog Round Up

I like to read a number of different blogs of people who are smarter, funnier, and better at leadership than I am. One of those blogs is Perry Noble's Blog. Perry is the pastor of New Spring Church in Anderson, SC. There was one thing in Perry's blog that struck me this past week.

It had to do with some of his thoughts on leaving the safe places as Christians. It reminded me of our current series at New Season, Reach: How Radical Followers of Jesus Make a Difference. As Perry reminds us, radical followers of the radical Jesus move out of safe places. I like to say to the churches that I have served "if we are not willing to do everything we can within the bounds of the Gospel to help people come to know Christ then we are basically telling people in our community they can go to hell." Perry put it even better with these words:

"Churches are called to reach beyond their walls to people who do not know Christ--BUT many refuse because this is unsafe. "Those people don't know the rules--they don't dress like us, they wear NASCAR t-shirts and believe that wrestling is real!" Nope--many churches want a church full of people JUST LIKE THEM--this is safe, it's COMPLETELY UNBIBLICAL--but safe. And so every week people show up at their stained glass fortressed and give their community the middle finger and tell them to go to hell because reaching them would take some serious changing...and that would just not be safe!"

Are we willing to change and move out of safe places? Are we willing to give up buildings, our sacred worship times, our favorite pews/ chars, and whatever else for the sake of making and empowering radical followers of Jesus Christ? Seems to me that as we move toward Christmas and celebrate the birth of Christ we are celebrating the One who left the safe place of heaevn and came to us that we might be saved. Might we as His radical followers leave our safe places that some might be saved.