I’ve been thinking a lot about love recently. I guess it started after reading an article about the state of teenagers in our nation. It was an interesting article to read as it was full of studies and surveys of Canadian teenagers. The general gist was that teenagers of this millennium are drinking less, doing less drugs and having less sex. Which in itself, should be an encouraging statistic… except that according to the same article, the number of teenagers claiming to be Christian has fallen dramatically over the past 20 years. There are multitudes of teenagers converting to other faiths, like Islam and Buddhism, but sadly not to Christianity.
So I guess the question is, why?
Now of course the media tends to be anti-church – we know this because there definitely are thriving, amazing churches in this nation (which of course haven’t been mentioned in this article!). But I will say that the response of the church to the generations of the past 20 years has definitely not helped to change people’s perception of His church. Jesus himself gave the church very clear instructions about how to live. When questioned by the Pharisees about what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt 22:37-38). Is it possible that as we have progressed on our Christian walk, we have forgotten about the second part of that statement? Or maybe we haven’t forgotten, we have just ignored it perhaps. We recite grace before meals, say our bedtime prayers, read our bibles and attend church on Sundays as an expression of our love to God. Some of us also volunteer at church and tithe each week to show Him that we love Him and are willing to sacrifice our time and money for His cause.
The problem is that loving God and loving people are not mutually exclusive. You can’t love God without loving people. Jesus said that the second commandment was equally important to the first. And perhaps if we, the body of Christ, were better at loving people there wouldn’t be this trend in Canada of people seeking for answers anywhere else but the church.
The bible says in 1 Cor 13: 4 that “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
So how are you doing at loving the people around you? Your family, your friends, your colleagues, the strangers you meet on this journey called life? How are you, the church, loving your neighbour as yourself? I know that I’m not even close to where I want to be, where I need to be.
There is a generation of young people that may have never even stepped foot in to a church. We could argue that the church in Canada needs to be more evangelistic and not so inward focused or that it needs to be more relevant… change the method so that it relates more to this generation. Or we could argue that the church needs to be committed to excellence and then people would come. And to all of those things I would say… YES… absolutely! But don’t you think people come to church more for the community and friendship than for how excellent or relevant a service is? Imagine people coming to church because rather than the judgment and condemnation they are expecting to receive, they instead find a haven of unconditional love and acceptance.
I have a dear friend in Australia – she emailed me recently and her email confirmed these thoughts on love. She said “I was praying this morning and you and Vantage popped into mind and as I asked God what to pray for, the Holy Spirit said ‘By this will all men know that you are my disciples: if you have love for each other’. So I prayed that but when I tried to continue praying other things over you and your team, it seemed the Holy Spirit was stuck on ‘Love’. I pray that in all your excellence and wisdom and authority and faith, you will continue to be guided by love.”
It’s a challenge for all of us. My prayer is that a similar study is done in another 20 years and that the tides will have turned completely. That people will be rushing to the church for answers and that the church would be so appealing, so beautiful and so full of possibility and hope that there would be no other choice for searching hearts but the love and grace of Jesus Christ.
“There are three things that will endure – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love.”
Tags: Australia, Canada, Christian, church, community, excellence, faith, family, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, love, relevant, tithing, Vantage Church, volunteer
“The problem is that loving God and loving people are not mutually exclusive. You can’t love God without loving people.”
Thanks for this reminder… Our generation loves to express our love to God through worship, but sometimes misses that there must be a horizontal effect of love as well.
Looking forward to more of Vantage Church’s heart and vision.
I love what you wrote!
My experience has been that many churches try really hard to love people outside the church with partial success, but we have too often ignored some other words of Jesus – that the world will know we are his followers by our love FOR ONE ANOTHER.
We clearly need to love our neighbour and all others around us; we definitely need to love the “unlovable”; and we certainly must love those who don’t love us back. But I think too often we have forgotten to effectively love others within the church. What would happen if we as a church loved each other so much that people on the outside looking in would see our relationships and say “I want some of that”? Just maybe, if there was less fighting, bickering, and disagreement between different churches and between individuals within churches, we would have a more attractive package to present to people. Just maybe, by presenting a more attractive package, we could draw more people and turn away less. Just maybe, if we loved one another properly while also loving others, we could bring more people into the kingdom of God.
I read this a few weeks ago and it really touched my spirit and led me into a lot of prayer and thoughtfulness.
I honestly feel that through your church, a lot of people who have never known true unconditional love, whether through our Lord and Saviour or otherwise, are going to finally find it, chains will be broken, lives will be healed and something over your city will be broken….cant wait to see it all unfold.
Bless you Bassetts….you’re awesome