One of my other responsibilities is to help promote evangelism in the District as the District Evangelism Task Group Enabler. One of the things that the District committed itself to was to employ an Evangelism Enabler. We deliberately chose the word evangelism to avoid any confusion over using the name mission – people understand evangelism better even if some get hung up on tele-evangelists they have known.
We had a meeting to support the DEE (District Evangelism Enabler) and something came out again about how depressed the church seems to be. Unfortunately we have talked so much about decline that we seem to have accepted it as an inevitable part of our work. The more depressed we become the less attractive our message is. The gospel is supposed to be good news but all we ever seem to talk about is the bad.
The news that God love us is surely enough. If our old churches are no longer working then lets concentrate on where God is choosing to work and then we will see God’s kingdom grow. I don’t believe that God has finished with church or that the way we have done church is wrong but shouldn’t we as Christians spend our time working where God wants us to, rather than moaning about where God used to work?
Let’s get positive about our faith, still the largest by far and growing faster world wide than ever. God’s good news is still good news!