|
Ablaze! Challenge
By Rev. David A. Davis
Ablaze! What a challenge: Share the
Gospel with 100,000,000 people by the year 2017! But then, challenge is part of
our heritage.
Martin
Luther challenged people. The 95 Theses
together with the Small and Large Catechisms
challenged both the establishment of the Church and the congregations of
the countryside. These formative documents pushed people! And by God's grace,
the Church and her people thrived.
Are you ready
to be challenged? Ablaze! is not a program, a binder, or a DVD. It is a challenge.
What will it take to have the people in the LCMS share the Gospel with
100,000,000 people between now and 2017, the 500th Anniversary of
the Reformation?
We must
be clear on this: The challenge is not
really for the LCMS, it is for the people of the LCMS! Are we ready to
challenge and be challenged individually?
So, what
will it take?
1. It will take congregations counting and reporting critical Gospel
events.
Does your congregation count and keep track of how often
its members have shared the Gospel? Congregations count the weekly offering,
worship attendance, baptisms, and communion attendance. What matters gets
counted. And, as it turns out, when we count things they end up mattering even
more. Why not count and report the number of times members of our congregations
share their Christian faith with others? Is there a more important work that we
can do this side of eternity? That
is the focus of Ablaze!.
Ablaze! challenges us more squarely to focus on what counts:
sharing the Gospel with unbelievers. The Bible has convinced us that the Holy
Spirit builds Christ's kingdom through the proclamation of the Gospel. Why
would we not want to count such activity?
"Doing Ablaze!" means counting and
reporting critical Gospel events. We should not underestimate the power of this
simple idea.
2. For us to reach 100,000,000 people, we are going to have to become different
people. We will need to be driven by passion not programs.
Being Ablaze!
means something different: people on fire-committed, persistent, and
disciplined.
The heart of the Reformation was grace through faith:
Christ's work on our behalf. But make no mistake, Martin Luther worked hard to
grow in that truth and to share that truth. (You don't write a shelf full of
books without a little effort!). He was disciplined, dauntless, and
indefatigable.
And he called on others to be the same. Luther minced no
words about Christians undisciplined in the faith. He even suggested that
children not be given food or drink until memory work was properly recited!
While I am not suggesting that, I am suggesting this: Let's challenge one another to grow in the
truth in order to share the truth. To share the Gospel with 100,000,000 people,
humanly speaking, will take more commitment, perseverance, and discipline. Specifically,
I invite you to accept an "Ablaze! Challenge", a challenge that
could set the Church on fire!
- READ THROUGH THE BIBLE EVERY YEAR. The Reformation was a
literary revolution. It opened the Bible to the laity, not just the
leadership. The Word of God is the power of God that changes everything!
Let's dive into the word instead of dabble with it! Is there any good
reason not to read through the Bible annually?
- PRAY FOR A HALF- HOUR A DAY. Let's get aggressive in our
prayer life. Extended prayer is not the vain babbling rejected by Jesus in
the Sermon on the Mount. It is heart felt prayer to the Father modeled by
Jesus on numerous occasions. Luther taught in the Large Catechism that the Reformation was sustained by the
prayers of God's people! (Read his introduction to the Lord's Prayer in
the Large Catechism and you'll
never think about aggressive praying the same.) Let's move ahead on our
knees!
- GIVE JESUS TEN PERCENT OF YOUR INCOME. The world trusts money;
Christians trust God! Tithing breaks trust in money and builds confidence
in God. We have got to become a people more trusting of God by entrusting
ourselves to him through tithing. Our focus on money in the Church cannot
be to keep our various institutions afloat. It must be on positioning
people through tithing to be able to see God taking care of his people so
that they have more stories to tell. If we are going to reach 100,000,000
people, confidence in God will go a lot further than any amount of money!
- INTENTIONALLY DEVELOP RELATIONSHIPS WITH FOUR
UNBELIEVERS.
The longer we are in the church, the less likely we are to really know
people outside of the church. How can we reach people when we are not even
connected with them? How might our Church be different if each of us took
an active spiritual interest in four people who don't know Jesus?
- BRING ALONG SEVEN OTHERS TO TAKE UP THIS "ABLAZE! CHALLENGE". What would happen if we each
would bring along seven other fellow believers to make this same
commitment? Would your congregation be more evangelistic if ten percent of
your people took up this challenge? What if ten percent of our
congregations took it up? What if it became fifteen percent? And then
twenty? And so on. This is how movements behave.
Movements
really are grass roots. Movements are driven by a clear idea (share the Gospel
with 100,000,000 people), by great passion ("Ablaze! Challenge"), and
diffused organization (Ablaze! Counting).
Passion,
not programs! If we are going to share the Gospel with 100,000,000 people
before 2017, it will be because we have become more passionate, not more
programmatic.
____________________________________________
Rev.
David A. Davis serves as senior pastor at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Haslett, Michigan
and Ablaze!
Coordinator for the Michigan District. For more information about this "Ablaze!
Challenge" and how you might commit to it, contact Rev. David Davis at ablaze@michigandistrict.org
|
