The idea of a mutual gospel quest has departed from a lot of churches. It’s actually pretty easy to get people to sit in pews on Sunday and listen to uplifting messages, and yet never get the idea of being mutually “yoked” in Christ.
God has brought me back to one of the few (little, struggling, and yet surviving) churches that has started to go beyond.
What happens when people who know they need a yoke can’t find a good one? They often opt for bad yokes which turn out neither to be light nor easy. And yet lust keeps them there, in that hard, difficult yoke.
That’s what’s going on in the middle of sex perversion. Should the church fear to confront this? Heaven, no. We stand on promises that are as incredible to nominal religious thinkers as to walk on water would be. But, and this is a giant caveat, this kind of effort needs to be backed up with much focused, persistent prayer. This would seem to be obvious for a mission — and yet it so often gets treated as an afterthought.
We used to attend a small Lutheran church near us. I liked that it wasn’t a large corporate type church where everything seems to be about money.
The pastor was an older easy going Swedish guy. Very likeable.
Then they got rid of him and brought in a young woman. The “I’m gonna change the world “ type. The rainbow flag went up. We left, as did many others. The church, which had been there for many years, folded a few years later.
It’s as if they don’t care if they succeed as long as they destroy everything in the way.