In the recent Engage magazine (A Publication for the Friends of the Atlantic District Mission Society) eleven mission outreaches in the district were highlighted.  Out of the eleven one (Zap) was about a youth outreach to seniors, one (Church for All Nations) was an outreach to musicians in Manhattan, one (SonRise Church) was an outreach in up state New York, one (Resurrection Garden City) was a church planting effort on Long Island and the other seven had to do with reaching ethnic groups with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  There are great strides and many successes as we reach out to the ethnic communities.  The Guyanese, Chinese, Indian, Bangladesh and Liberian ministries are making great strides and seeing praise worthy results, while many of our congregations are stagnating and some are in decline.

A good friend of mine says that an emphasis of the church should be to “save whitie”.  Not very politically correct I will admit but never-the-less I think he has a valid point.  We are quick to reach out to those outside our culture with the gospel, yet we all to often take a maintenance approach when it comes to reaching people like ourselves.  What keeps us from making the same effort to reach white ethnics that we do when it comes to reaching other groups?

Do we see the same need to reach our own that we have toward reaching others?  I wonder if we still view missions through the eyes of colonialism.  Do we see ourselves as senders and take some satisfaction from that and not see ourselves as receivers in need of the gospel?  Do we have the attitude that if we just hold church they will come?  Have we, are we, failing to reach our Jerusalem because we have lost touch with our own culture?  Have we gotten to the place where we the church is speaking a language that now else around us is speaking?  Do we lack the gifts of communicating our faith to our own people?

I know that we are concerned that many of our churches are in decline, certainly not all but I would argue way too many.  We are a slowly shrinking denomination.  Many churches are wrestling with music and liturgy trying to be relevant in the hopes that people might come and worship.  These are important questions that we think about at Church for All Nations, and I would never down play there importance, but they are in house issues not evangelistic ones.

Why is it that there are huge black and Latino churches in our cities?  Why do store front churches line the streets in our poor neighbors?  Why are we not drawing converts from the upwardly mobile communities?  Are we holding on to something that is holding us back?

We are doing a poor job of reaching the cities for Christ.  We are not raising up leaders who can hit the ground running.  There is no mission strategy in place that has a component for training urban missionaries.  To argue that we are putting our efforts in reaching the suburbs is a losing strategy in the long run.  If we don’t reach the cities for Christ the cities will and are reaching out to the rest of the country.

Just take a look at Hip Hop culture.  Hip Hop is a urban phenomena that started in the South Bronx when a DJ named Kool Herc wanted to get the party started.  What started in a poor neighborhood in the Bronx has grown to touch the lives of young people throughout the world.  It has an evangelical zeal that reaches into the smallest communities in our country.  It is inescapable.  The media is effecting the way we think and act as a culture.  You can’t write of the cities and you can’t hide from their influences.  What starts in the city will spread, through the entertainment world, until it reaches us all in our secluded outposts.

We are missing the point when we spend our time only on external issues.  We need to be training and sending our people into the highways and byways compelling the lost to come.  Our people young and old are not sharing our understanding about God.  Many have never darkened the doors of a church but they have all been effected and changed by the messages they are receiving daily into their homes.

Jesus told us to go, not to maintain.  If we focus on maintenance we will become more and more irrelevant an eventually die.  In the 50’s our churches were full.  That is no longer the case.  There was a shared church culture then that made it easy for us to grow.  This is no longer the case.  We can make excuses that we are holding steadfastly to the truth, but the facts remain.  We are speaking, if at all, a language that no one understands.  We are answering questions no one is asking.  We are taking comfort in our doctrinal purity while the multitudes are wondering lost, like sheep without a shepherd.