There are lots of people outside the church that don’t have direction

Today we are going to think about Matt 9:35-38. There are crowds of people who need Christ and who know it so we should ask God to send out workers to them.

One of the strange things I find about the modern church is that they seem to assume that only a very small minority of people want to know about Jesus and all of those already go to church.

Whenever I’ve been in a meeting with church people and talk about trying to grow the numbers there is an assumption that someone this is going to be the hardest thing that anyone has ever done. They almost seem to be defeated before they have even tried.

Now I happen to live near Glastonbury. It’s the alternative spiritual centre for England. If you walk through Glastonbury you can immediately see that there are an awful lot of people making a living from all this. Now if people who are seeking spirituality were few in number then nobody would be able to make a living from it.

The problem always seems to me that the churches just seem to want people who are like them. They want people to be all parceled up like proper Christians before they will contemplate having anything to do with them.

Even the way they do evangelism is often geared up to reflect this. They might have a meeting where they have a speaker who will call people to respond. All very churchy. If you even manage to get in the door (this is terrifying for many unchurched people) then you are only welcome if you enjoy what we have to offer.

Even some of the more relaxed approaches, like befriending people, seem to assume that the only people you want are those who you would want to be your friend.

I think I’m being a little hard here because its easy to criticise from the outside without offering solutions.

I would suggest though that churches try and start where people are e.g. Glastonbury etc.

Jesus indicated that there are crowds of people wanting salvation. That is loads of people who actually want a spiritual side to life. He didn’t say it was easy to reach them – indeed we need people who God sends to do this.

So we pray for God’s help.

There are loads of people who are open to Jesus and yet few ways for these people to find Jesus. Are you going to be someone who can help them or just another barrier to them?