The Church Is Not for the Lost

Jesus pulled large crowds, thousands fed on a hillside and they chased Him across a lake hoping for another free meal. By the metrics we use today His ministry was a success. The numbers were up. And then He said the wrong thing:

"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life." He said it without regret and didn't take it back when they recoiled in horror. John 6:60 records their reaction: "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" These weren't Pharisees, these were people close enough, devoted enough, to be called His disciples.

And then they left. "After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him" (John 6:66). The same crowd that was willing to cross a sea for Him yesterday, turned around today and headed for home.

And Jesus didn't chase them, He also didn't soften the message or send anyone after them to clarify. Instead He turned to the twelve, those closest to Him, and asked if they were going to leave too. He just watched as the room emptied out. And He did nothing to stop it.

We need to pause here, because this is the exact thing we've spent the last fifty years trying to engineer out of our churches.

Our instincts took us in a different direction. Someone had the idea to ask unchurched people what they didn't like about church. And they were happy to tell us: don't ask for money, don't bore me, don't make me feel guilty or ashamed. So we obliged, removed all those things. And we kept asking, and kept removing. We sanded down the room until nothing in it could offend the stranger who didn't know the people inside.

It worked.

The crowds grew. The buildings filled up. We built bigger buildings, and they kept filling up. We just didn't risk asking what they were being filled with.

Bill Hybels, of Willow Creek outside Chicago, built the biggest version of this. They started it in the mid-seventies and grew past twenty-thousand every weekend. Then they exported the method to thousands of churches who all wanted similar results. On a human level it was working. The crowds were real.

In 2004 his team conducted a study of their own congregation to see if the attendance was producing mature believers. What they found was disappointing. Hybels stood up at his own leadership summit and told them: "We made a mistake." He said they should have been teaching the people to feed themselves, to read Scripture outside of services, to take responsibility for their own growth instead of waiting for the next program to do it for them.

The model grew crowds. It did not grow disciples. The two had quietly stopped being the same thing.

The truth is you don't need the study to know it. You can feel it. You've sat in the room built so sterile any stranger would be comfortable. And then you walked out and felt just as comfortable, just as unchallenged, just as unchanged.

The thing no one considered is conviction. To a person who's alone with it, it can feel like guilt and shame. The demands of following Jesus sound like an unreasonable God making unfair claims on a life He didn't ask permission to touch. So they removed it.

When the same demand comes from someone whose life you've actually watched, from someone who invited you, from someone whose faith you've seen cost them something, then it reads completely differently. Suddenly the thing that made the person you trust becomes the thing that made them who they are. It's the relationship that makes the hard parts survivable. Without relationship, the Cross is just an execution. Through relationship, the Cross becomes the reason your friend is the way they are.

This means the work never belonged to the building. It belonged to the body.

Take another look at John 6. The hard saying drove away the crowd that came for bread. It didn't drive off the twelve. Peter didn't answer and say it wasn't hard. He said, "where else would we go, you have the words of life." They stayed because they knew Him. They'd been close enough, long enough, that it wasn't a reason to leave. Both groups heard the same words, but they each had a different response. Those who came for what they could get, and those who knew exactly what they had.

The offense isn't a flaw that needs to be removed. It's a filter that reveals who's been discipled and who came for the show. The only thing that can hold a person in that offense is being close enough to someone long enough to trust the demand even before it's fully understood.

So we have been asking the wrong question. We keep asking what makes church uncomfortable to the lost. But the lost person was never supposed to start at the door. They were supposed to start with you, in their life, long before any Sunday. So when they finally walk in they are already prepared. They are the ones sanded down, not the building. They are carried in by a relationship we currently try to handle with claims of excellence and no personal demands.

You were meant to be the door to the gospel, not to the room.

This is where we need to stop for a minute. I know what you want to do with all of this. You want to find a better church. A different model. Something with more depth, higher commitment, real teaching, better programs, more lights, the room finally arranged the right way so it produces what those past seeker rooms couldn't.

It's the same mistake wearing different clothes. It's still asking the building to do what we were called to do.

There is no better model coming. Even Willow changed its approach after the study revealed the model was never the problem. Disciples make disciples. Buildings can't. No matter how you light it, no matter how deep the teaching, no matter how charismatic the speaker, no matter how professional the musicians. You keep waiting for the church to produce the one thing only a person can produce.

And the person they are waiting on is you.

The lost people in your life are not waiting for a better service to attend. They are waiting for you to be in their life on a Tuesday. When they get the call that their parent is in the hospital. When they get the bad report from the doctor. When the economy shifts and they are downsized, and don't know how they'll make their mortgage. No worship set, or better livestream, or another program will give them hope. Seeing you walk through similar things and not give up, not turn your back on your faith. They'll see the demands of the faith through whoever you've shown them you are, or they'll never see it at all.

The church is not outsourcing the job to you. It was always your job. You just handed it to the building hoping you wouldn't have to be the one standing next to anyone when the hard saying landed.

Jesus said go and make, not sit and wait.

He didn’t say build a room nice enough that the lost wander in and save themselves while you watch from the third row, unbothered, planning where you're going for lunch after the service.

Jesus emptied the room on purpose. The ones who stayed did so because they knew Him.

Who knows you well enough to stay?