Return

When we have favorite things we often go back over and over to enjoy them. Even an old classic like Legend of Zelda, (which I personally have played many times over.) we download on our phones or PC. We can travel farther and farther away from our roots, in this case the games we started with, and find new loves and places to stay in but the favorites, our first loves, and our beginnings will always have a place in our hearts.

We return no matter how far we have gone back to our roots for fun and nostalgia, but we are always looking forward for what is new on the horizon. What is that next game that will captivate the older us like we were young again. It is almost a longing for something new and exciting yet safe and familiar. We want our games to change but don't want to lose the past.

We do this for many many things in our lives, yet sometimes it feels that we are not willing to let anything change at all when it comes to our Christian lives. We want churches to remain the same, keeping the traditional services despite no longer reaching the people we need to. We keep the same bible even though new manuscripts and various documents have been found combined with better understanding of ancient languages have given us better translations. We don't want change even though we lost our past.

Time has moved forward and we are losing what made the church grow as much as it did. In the U.S. our churches are failing and closing, God is banned from everywhere, and we let it happen. Yet over seas the churches are growing by leaps and bounds. New people by the thousands everyday are turning to Christ for salvation, even when it could be death for them and their entire family. Because God is so worth it.

I was asking my mother today, how do we grow a church? I hear of these small churches that are growing and thriving and making such an impact on their cities and towns, yet many of the ones I see are dwindling and dying. What is it that has kept the church growing elsewhere, yet so many in the U.S. are dying? 

I kinda think its a combination of compromise and a displacement of God. Displacement. We make church into something that is for us and our families, not a place for lost people trying to find real answers. We keep our past without growing our future. Compromise. We are settling on Politically Correct instead of Biblically Correct. It is a hard, hard road we are traveling, in a hard, hard time. There are no easy answers to my question. God needs to be there is obvious, but how do we engage young people who are more interested in pleasures of now than peace of tomorrow.

Can we return to our roots so we can travel farther and farther into the world to get His Word out there? Are we able to stop compromising the Bible despite the fear of being hated for it? Who will finally realize that the church is not a place to feel good about yourself, but a place of introspection? Are we able to keep up with the Church around the world in our own little churches here? Can the church return? You tell me.