Another Sunday, the Lord's Day, our Christian day of worship. I sit watching the crowded auditorim when my focus and attention really should be on God. I sense there are a lot of carbon-copy Christians entering the room. We went through the motions of another week, and now we are about to go through the motions of worship. Maybe I am projecting my own bias, but I see a lot of people who are sitting, completely disengaged from what is going on around them (myself included).
The last few years I have had a dramatic shift in my spiritual paradigms. I haven't drifted far from my core beliefs. I am not ready to run headlong towards spiritual Bablyon, but I do long for the New Jerusalem, the shining city on a hill, a place of refuge where all can come for repentance and restoration.
I remember the day over a decade ago when a man walked into our assembly intent on intimidating those present. The years of drugs and addiction made him a hard, callous man who would just as soon cut your throat as carry on a conversation. He wasn't welcomed, greeted or offered a seat of honor (or any seat at all for that matter). Most people made a conscious effort to walk the long way around the auditorium.
A few months later that man was my brother in Christ. His hair neatly cropped, his heart completely changed. He continued to struggle with the challenges of his past. Members struggled with how to help him, but he was trying, searching and longing for something better than he had known.
For years I longed for a church without problems, now I shudder to think what that mindset means to the salvation of men. The troubled, the heartsick, addicts and outcasts need a safe harbor, a place of refuge from the storms of life. If they are not welcome in our churches, ministered to by the saints, and taught by the faithful - where will they go?
So answer that question for me - WHERE WILL THEY GO?
