WARNING: Dangerous Thoughts Ahead

Wow! So I'm preaching on Jonah on Sunday. Not the typical swallowed by the "whale" sermon though. I'm focusing on Jonah chapter 4. Jonah's waiting for God to destroy Nineveh, but it never happens. Jonah is furious. He's ticked at God for showing grace. How amazing!

You know, isn't that like us though? I think we in the church do a good job of saying that Jesus is for everyone, that God loves everyone. "Just not them." We have a hard time accepting people into the church who aren't just like us. It's so hypocritical.

So now I'm struggling with my sermon. There's so much I want to say, but not sure if it fits in well with the sermon. God has just been revealing so much to me lately. The topic I'm dealing with the past 2 days has been about being a "missional" church. How many of our churches would support a missionary who just goes into a village, builds a building and says come? None of them. Because we know that the missionary must first be accepted into their culture. If the village needs a well, he digs a well. So why is it that churches just build a pretty new building a say, "Come" without ever being first accepted into the culture of the community.

Our churches must begin to think more like missionaries instead of ministers. We must think about reaching the community instead of the community just eventually making its way to us.

Not sure if too many people will buy into that theory here. It's worthy mentioning though. Ideas always sound good on a tape or in a book, but when you ask people to implement those ideas, they run like chickens. Stay tuned......