"Come to Us - Free Christmas Gift Wrapping" - I suspect we've lost our identity...

I'm looking forward to tomorrow - no Starbucks, just a lunch meeting with friends I get to learn from who are wiser than I, and an afternoon spent in some coffee shop getting some odd stuff done and writing my first Christmas letter.

So, on my home, I drive by this church. They have signs outside that say, "Free Christmas Gift Wrapping Saturday December 15."

I must preface this by saying there are different approaches to ministry, and God can use all for His glory, but I can't help but think there's a better way. I feel the western church is caught in a "come to us" mentality. We make it our goal to do everything we can to get people in our doors. And I'm not sure this should be our goal. As I read through scripture, I see a church in action, a church that realizes its calling is not to ask people to come to their buildings, to come to their services, but a church that realizes its calling to go to people, to serve people. At Jacob's Well, it is our goal to equip and mobilize believers to see themselves as missionaries where they are at and figure out what they may look like.

In our culture today, too many people have been burned by the church - they've had bad experiences and don't want to go through it again. It's a near impossibility these people will go to a church building, or anything church-related. So the church must recognize its calling to go to people.

Instead of asking people to come to us, to have their Christmas gifts wrapped by us, to come to our services, why not go to them? Can you imagine what it would be like, if instead of trying to get a few people from your church to volunteer to wrap gifts at a certain time on a Saturday afternoon, you mobilized the entire church to go out - to offer to wrap presents for their friends, others in their houses, apartments, and dorms - and when you do this, you have the opportunity to reach people who would never grace a church building with their presence.

We must, as a church, as followers of Jesus, realize our calling is to go - and go does not simply mean across the world - it means across the hall, the street, the city - it means to see yourself as a missionary where you are at and find ways to show the love of Jesus in tangible ways to friends and family and neighbors. This is what it means to go. I pray that the western church is recaptured by her mission to go. I pray God would use Jacob's Well as a catalyst for this type of movement in Minnesota.