Shortly
after I stepped down from the pulpit last August, I realized I had made a mistake.
No, not stepping down from the pulpit. Rather, I had preached for over 20 years
about reaching the unchurched. That worked in some cultural contexts. For
example, I spent almost 5 1/2 years living in Argentina in a city of half a
million people, most of whom were definitely unchurched. That has not been the
case in my ministry experience in the United States.
A
month or so after I left the pulpit, it occurred to me that most of the 80% of
the people in Tyler who were not part of a church were not unchurched–they were overchurched.
There is a big difference.
Unchurched
people have little knowledge of God, Jesus, or Scripture. They are truly
secular.
Overchurched
people know a lot of information about God, Jesus, and the Bible. They have
simply chosen to not allow it to impact their lives. Overchurched people, for
various reasons, have been vaccinated against Christianity. It is as if they
have received a tiny injection of Christianity, and they have built within
themselves a spiritual immunity to Jesus and his church.
I
spent almost seven years asking the same question every day–how do we at Shiloh
reach the unchurched people of Tyler? I was asking the wrong question. We are a
generation away from Tyler comprising itself primarily of unchurched people. All
along, I should have been asking–how do we reach the overchurched people of Tyler?
That
question raises an entirely different set of questions, yet they are equally
important. Neither the unchurched nor the overchurched know the Lord. However,
each group is strategically approached in different ways.
I
am still raising questions about how to reach the overchurched. I have some
ideas, though. More on that to come.
2 comments:
Amen
Thanks, Ben.
ME
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