This is the second in a series of articles to convince you or help you convince others of our need as Christians to “mind our own business.” First, we determined that our business is obeying the command of Jesus found in the four Gospels and the Book of Acts to take His message of salvation to the world. Since the world then, is our place of business, we need to remember some simple facts about our territory.

• This Is A Changing World. The church is often the last to recognize this fact, and continues to function in the same way it has for generations. Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and tomor­row. The Gospel will never change, but the world to which He has sent us changes continually. September 11, 2001 radically changed our country and world. Racial and language factors, cultures and customs, concepts of morali­ty, political situations go through rapid transitions. Borders and names of countries change so frequently that maps are quickly out of date. Think of the centrality of the computer, email, instant messaging and instant news from around the world. More than 39 million Americans, slightly more than 14% of the population, changed their addresses last year. Look at the changes in our own communities; farmland turned into housing developments, lifestyles that make former methods of reaching people ineffective. The church is not a center of community life as it once was. We cannot ignore these factors and we need constantly to rethink how we can change to reach the broader world as well as the world around us with the Gospel of Christ. “We’ve never done it that way before” are words of a stagnant and dying church.
• This Is A Growing World. The International Data Base of the U.S. Census Bureau’s website projects births in 2010 to be 131,940,516, about the same number born every year. On March 1, 2010, the estimated world population was 6,819,416,692; that is 25,823,006 more than on January 1, 2010. With population increase, there are growing problems of health, standards of living, tensions, wars, racial hatred, refugees, and spiritual emptiness. The church’s business is to reach these multiplying millions to meet their needs and problems, because not only is this a growing world –
• This Is Also A Dying World. At least 56,545,138 will die this year, about two per second, millions of them entering eternity without Jesus Christ. We can’t keep them from dying, but we can work to reach them for Christ to prepare them. (Note: The number of deaths stated does not include the 40-50 million babies who are killed by abortion each year, approximately 125,000 per day. See http://www.worldometers.info/.) About 33% of the world’s population is Christian, including all who claim to be Christian. About 7% are evangelical Christians, meaning those who “emphasize commitment to per­sonal faith, conversion and evangelism” (Johnston & Mandryk, Operation World). If Jesus Christ is the answer to life and death (and He is) and promises abundant and eternal life through a personal relationship with Him (and He does), then it follows that we must take the message of His love, forgiveness and salvation to the entire world just as He has told us to do.

H. Milton Wilder
Missionary Pastoral Care

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Missionary Pastoral Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.