CHURCHES THAT REACH THE LOST

William Willimon's insightful books speak wonder and awe to my heart.  I deem him brilliant because he can transmit his genius into my simplicity.  He speaks in depth and I understand in shallowvocity.  I share with you a mere portion of his writings.

Superfluity is a big problem for my church family, mainline Protestantism.  At best we are little more than "ambulances on the battlefield of life."  At worst we are a rather sanctimonious self-help society, a Rotary club, meeting on Sundays at eleven.....

.....I contend that, through evangelism, through repeated confrontation with the intrusive grace of God, the church can be born again.  By letting God use us in God's never-ending pursuit of the unbaptized, the baptized can rediscover what it means for us to be the church, that unlikely gathering of those who are called to sign, signal, and witness to the graciousness of God in a world dying for lack of salvation.....

.....the good news of Jesus is so odd that we never get so good at hearing it and living on the basis of it that we don't need to hear it again.

When we remain evangelistic the church is in a perpetual state of rebirth.  When not, the church quickly slips into a deep rut of judgmentalistic non-productivity.  Churches that reach the lost are the churches Jesus is building.  To be otherwise would be to function as trees with big leaves and no fruit.