By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
Lockport Church recently engaged in a five-year review of where the church is and where it should be in five years. My wife and I have been members at Lockport since I retired from Grace Community 13 years ago.
It is a solid church with good theology and “salt of the earth” people you can trust and count on. I can’t think of a church I’d rather attend.
As I filled out the questionnaire, I began to answer two questions and realized they are almost identical. “What is your biggest concern for our congregation?” And “What is your biggest hope for Lockport in the next five years?”
In writing out my answers, I came to see what we and the larger Church need. It’s exactly what the Church at Ephesus needed, as we see in Rev. 2:2-5: “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.
I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.”
This was a “salt of the earth” church. They worked hard, they persevered, they would not tolerate wickedness, they rejected false teachings. But they also followed Christ passionately. And they were admonished for stopping.
Where is that passion in the church today? We’re a county filled with churches of 20 and 30 and 40 people. How did that happen? We lost our passion! We lost the love that drove us to do great and mighty things for the kingdom.
We lost the passion to step out in faith and change the world! We quit getting out of the boat and trusting God in our circumstances. We decided to play it safe. To check our bank balance before doing ministry.
We decided to run our churches by committee and not by the direction, promises and power of the Holy Spirit. We began to think in terms of what is safe rather than what God is calling us to do. We began to choose intellect over passionate emotions.
We forgot that Jesus created passionate followers…and enemies. The Pharisees didn’t just disagree with Jesus, they hated him enough to kill him. That’s pretty passionate.
The Apostles didn’t hide after the infilling of the Holy Spirit, they stepped out and preached right in front of the same people who had killed Jesus. Many died for their passionate faith in Jesus.
Where is that kind of passion in the church today? Instead of having churches of hundreds of passion-driven, love-filled disciples, we have dying churches trying to convince themselves that they are still relevant.
And they will remain that way until they realize that when Jesus said to pick up your cross and follow him, he meant “get out of the **** boat and change the world!”
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.
