The Church of Resistible Influence (not a typo)

I’ve just finished reading The Church of Irresistible Influence. Several things in this book resonated with what’s been going on in my world.
First of all, let me clarify something: Little Rock, the church that Robert Lewis the author pastors, is a mega-church. I attend what some would consider a “mega-church” and I love it. We run a 24-7 homeless shelter out of one site; we partner with a children’s organization out of another site in a desire to minister to the “orphans and widows”, biblically, not literally, speaking; and out of our third site, our anchor cause is caring for the elderly – the site is in the vicinity of several senior homes. Our staff is wonderful. They're both incredibly gifted and humble. They model a life of Christ-centredness and they challenge us to do likewise. Having said all of that, I will neither defend nor criticize the concept of the mega-church. In fact, that’s my first point. Church – wake up! Let’s stop criticizing each other. Actually, it’s not “each other”; it’s ourselves. The last I checked, Christ had one church.
One of the main functions of the church – like the church in Acts – is to be a church of irresistible influence to the world around it. How does this happen? It happens through unity; it happens through sacrificially looking after the needs of a broken and dying world; it happens through the leading and the signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit; and it happens when lives within the church are genuinely and transparently changing. It doesn’t happen through members of the body of Christ criticizing emerging churches, mega-churches, house churches, catholic churches, small churches and main-line churches from behind the pulpit, in books and through social media. The act of criticizing only accomplishes two things: it further divides and it robs a watching world of hope.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some things that some churches and celebrity Christian figures do that disturb me. If a friend were to say he wanted to buy so-and-so’s book or attend such-and-such a church or conference, I’d caution him if, and only if, I had an informed and fair knowledge. But I wouldn’t Facebook wall post, or Tweet or blog about it. Also let me point out that, like Paul in the New Testament, we should be concerned with and address heresy.
I’ve just read two Facebook threads recently. I won’t get into details regarding what these thread criticized. That’d be ironic, wouldn’t it? The posts had dozens of responders each. I actually started to respond to one and then deleted my response. I must confess, on the one thread I clicked “like” to a comment I agreed with. I immediately felt ashamed and tried to remove the “like” but couldn’t figure out how.
I measured what was going on in my Facebook world against what Lewis’s book has to say. If we have any hope of fulfilling Christ’s great commission, we have to become a church of irresistible influence. Like I said above, what could these criticisms possibly hope to accomplish besides disunity and causing a watching world to think, Wow, the church is messed up. We’ve created, not just through social media obviously, the church of resistible influence.
Criticizing is about pride and posturing. When was the last time someone criticized what you believed or what you were doing and you said, “Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Thanks. That’s gotta change in my life.” Isn’t change – needed changed – more likely to happen when someone who cares about you is willing to tell you in love what needs fixing? And they’re willing to help you through it?
In his book, Lewis wrote about 100's of pastors who got together in the late 90's to foster unity. Lewis thought, No, please not another pastor’s conference where we sit around and compare the size of our churches. He was happily surprised when instead of comparing and competing with one another, they were humble and honest about their struggles and short-comings. They came away asking, How can we make our Central Arkansas world a better place? Some of the initiatives they came up with – and which they have, as far as I know, sustained over 10 years later – were amazing. For a one-day event, they were able to raise enough money and mobilize enough people to rebuild playgrounds, paint and make repairs to schools, supply the needy with much needed food and clothing but to name a few of the many initiatives.
This brings me to my second point. In Robert Lewis’s The Church of Irresistible Influence, the author asks: if your church disappeared tomorrow would anyone notice?

To Be Continued...