Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - Help! I Can't Get To Jesus!

"It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God" (Acts 15:19 ).

I have found it very disturbing that the one thing that was designed to help bring non-Christians into a relationship with Jesus is often the very thing that has been the barrier to people finding Jesus - the Church. By Church, I'm referring to the assembling of believers in a specific location. Let me emphasize that I am speaking as an ordained minister who has served for several years on church staff and now am very involved as a lay person in my local body. Mainly I am speaking from a broken heart for the people I've seen turned away by the Church or turned off to Jesus because we as the Church made it too difficult for them to get to Jesus.

What are some typical ways we, as the Church, can make it difficult for people from the outside to get to Jesus? Here are just a few of the ways of which I have personally been guilty:

• Irrelevant programming. Churches get stuck providing programs that no longer meet the needs of people. We continue doing these programs because they might have worked sometime in the past, and it is easier to live with the illusion of spiritual accomplishment than to grapple with the truth of our ineffectiveness.
• Failure to think lost. Instead of asking ourselves what it will take to create an atmosphere for worship and an environment where a non-Christian can feel welcomed into a community of caring people, we spend the majority of our time making sure the "insiders" aren't thrown off by relocating the coffee pot. Basically, if a lost person isn't like us, we don't want them in our church.
• Legalism. In Matthew 12:1-4 , Matthew gives this account of Jesus and His disciples. "At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, 'Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.' He answered, 'Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread - which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.'" When Jesus was confronted with the opportunity to condemn people for their lack of spirituality, He chose instead to uphold the welfare of people, and it flew in the face of the Pharisees.
• Hypocritical lives. While it is inevitable that lost people will avoid Jesus with the excuse that the Church is "full of hypocrites," the reality is that the Church can serve as an enormous stumbling block to non-Christians by living one way on Sunday and living differently on every other day of the week.
• Expecting them to come to us. "Come and see." "Go and tell." These two action steps are the difference between effective and ineffective outreach. When it was realized that Jesus was no longer in His grave, the main message of the day was "come and see!" See the evidence of a life raised from the dead! The grave is empty! After His appearance to His disciples, His message to us has been "Go and tell." In the words of Ron Hutchcraft, "Today's lost person will most likely not go to a religious place to hear a religious speaker talk on a religious subject in words they do not understand." His point? We must go to them with the message of the Gospel. We cannot just sit back and accept the fact that "They know where the church is."

If you are a lay person, what are some ways that your church may be keeping non-Christians at arm's length? Prayerfully consider sharing those with your church leadership, along with possible solutions that you are willing to take the lead on if asked. If you are in church leadership, it would be well worth your time to gather your team and discuss ways you can make it easier for non-Christians to get to Jesus if they attend your church on any given weekend.