Attending church is important for Christians

The Bible tells us we need to attend church so we can worship God with other believers and be taught His Word for our spiritual growth (Acts 2:42;Hebrews 10:25). Church is the place where believers can love one another (1 John 4:12), encourage one another (Hebrews 3:13), “spur” one another (Hebrews 10:24), serve one another (Galatians 5:13), instruct one another (Romans 15:14), honor one another (Romans 12:10), and be kind and compassionate to one another (Ephesians 4:32).

When a person trusts Jesus Christ for salvation, he or she is made a member of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). For a church body to function properly, all of its “body parts” need to be present (1 Corinthians 12:14-20). Likewise, a believer will never reach full spiritual maturity without the assistance and encouragement of other believers (1 Corinthians 12:21-26). For these reasons, church attendance, participation, and fellowship should be regular aspects of a believer's life. Weekly church attendance is in no sense “required” for believers, but someone who belongs to Christ should have a desire to worship God, receive His Word, and fellowship with other believers.

Why are there so few men in the church?"

On any given Sunday, all across the world, churches are likely to have more women in the pews than men. Some estimates place the so-called “gender gap” in America at 61 percent women versus 39 percent men (www.uscongregations.org). That means that every Sunday there are millions more womenattending churchthan men.

There are several theories put forward for why, comparatively, there are so few men attending church. One theory is that the church’s teachings, emphasizing humility, holiness, and introspection, are seen by some men as “weak” or somehow less than masculine. Men are looking to be challenged with a “bold” message of adventure, danger, and aggressiveness.

Finding the right activities to attract men is also a challenge for many churches. Some congregations make an extra effort to provide times of fellowship and bonding for men by adding hunting expeditions, fishing trips, sports, etc., to their schedules.

What does the Bible say about contentment?

One dictionary defines contentment as “the state of being mentally or emotionally satisfied with things as they are.” Today it is rare that we find anyone who is truly content with his or her condition in life. The Bible has a great deal to say about contentment—being satisfied with what we have, who we are, and where we’re going. Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?” (Matthew 6:25).
In essence, Jesus is telling us to be content with what we have. Moreover, He has given us a direct command not to worry about the things of this world. Then He adds, “For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:32-33). From Jesus’ words, we can deduce that lack of contentment is sin and it puts us in the same category as those who do not know God.
The apostle Paul was a man who suffered and went without the comforts of life more than most people could ever imagine (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). Yet he knew the secret of contentment: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:12-13). The writer to the Hebrews adds, “Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we may boldly say: ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5-6). Yet people continue to seek after more of the things of this world, never contented with their lot in life. The bumper sticker that reads “He with the most toys wins!” epitomizes the world’s cravings for more and more.

Believe, Belong, Become

Someone once told me that every single human being has a desire to believe something, to become something and to belong to something. As we enter into relationship with others we need to listen for the clues to where people are at in this process. Ask people questions about what they believe, find out what they are searching to belong to, help them to come to grips with what they want to become.In some cases, the answers to these questions will be very practical. Some people want to become a nurse, or a mechanic. Others may want to become significant or necessary. A few people we talk to will reveal that they want to belong to a family, or a discussion group. We may even find that some are already identified with people who share their

viewpoint. Until we engage people in real, honest relationship we’ll never discover the answers to these questions, and we cannot help others find their own answers to these questions.

If nothing else, you can start your conversation by saying, “You know, I was reading the other day about how everyone wants to believe, belong to, and become something. What do you think about that?”

Let the Holy Spirit guide things from there and see where things go.

GARDNER VS WARRIOR

Another useful concept for me lately has been the understanding that there are two different styles of evangelism we can employ. As described in Spencer Burke’s book, “Making Sense of Church,” the two styles are “Warrior” and “Gardener”.

The “Warrior” model is the predominant method that I have been trained in over the course of my Christian life. This model uses ideas like closing the deal, winning the lost, and targeting sinners, as if they were deer on the other end of our hunting rifle. Our mindset, in this model, is squarely centered on results, and often we expect the result to come sooner rather than later. If we take a shot and miss, we simply move on to the next target and take a shot at another one.

Granted, this sort of evangelism style has been largely successful in bringing hundreds of thousands of people into faith in Christ over the years. Perhaps, again, our focus has been so centered on conversion that many have fallen through the cracks, but over the decades of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies especially, this “Bag’em and Tag’em” mode of evangelism netted

scores of new converts.

Romans Road to salvation

The Romans Road to salvation is a way of explaining the good news of salvation using verses from the Book of Romans. It is a simple yet powerful method of explaining why we need salvation, how God provided salvation, how we can receive salvation, and what are the results of salvation.

The first verse on the Romans Road to salvation is Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." We have all sinned. We have all done things that are displeasing to God. There is no one who is innocent. Romans 3:10-18 gives a detailed picture of what sin looks like in our lives.

The second Scripture on the Romans Road to salvation, Romans 6:23, teaches us about the consequences of sin - "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." The punishment that we have earned for our sins is death. Not just physical death, but eternal death!

The third verse on the Romans Road to salvation picks up where Romans 6:23  left off, "but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. "Romans 5:8 declares, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Jesus Christ died for us! Jesus' death paid for the price of our sins. Jesus' resurrection proves that God accepted Jesus' death as the payment for our sins.

Make Disciples

In the closing words of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus leaves us with what has become known as “The Great Commission.” In it, Jesus charges His disciples with a set of tasks until He returns. Here’s what Jesus commands us to do: 1) Go out into the world and make disciples.

2) Baptize these disciples in the name of the Trinity.

3) Teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded us.If we take a moment to evaluate how we, the Church, have done in accomplishing these tasks, I think we might see where we’ve missed the mark, and hopefully discover a few clues about how to get back on track. 

GO OUT

First, we’re called to go. It seems simple enough, but what frustrates me is how often I see us in the Church flipping things around the other way. For the most part, the organized Church has built a model of evangelism and discipleship that says, “Come to us.”

We build large buildings, we buy plasma television screens to announce our upcoming events, we host large-scale musicals and plays to dramatize the Gospel, and we instruct our members to invite their friends to Church so that the professional clergy can do the evangelizing.I’m not trying to say that these methods are wrong or evil, but just that we’ve taken a very simple and clear command to go and made it into a call for the world to come to us- to our house, with our rules, on our terms. This just isn’t what Jesus commanded us to do.

Jesus very easily could have commanded us to create appealing environments where the world felt welcome. He could have commanded us to make space for unbelievers to show up and meet us on our terms, but He didn’t. What He commanded us to do was to go out and, in the course of our everyday, regular life, communicate and live out the message of the Gospel to those we encounter along the way.

MAKE DISCIPLES

Secondly, Jesus commands us to make disciples. A disciple is someone who is daily, intentionally following Jesus with their whole life. A disciple is not a convert. If you take a look at how our local churches practice evangelism you’ll probably see a lot of emphasis placed on winning people to Christ, getting them to come forward in the meeting to make a public profession of faith, and not as much emphasis on taking them from this first step into all the other steps that follow.

Apology

There’s a great scene at the end of the film, “The Big Kahuna” where Danny DeVito’s character counsels a young co-worker about his heavy-handed mode of evangelism. He says, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or ‘How to Make Money in Real Estate with No Money Down.’

That doesn’t make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are - just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.”

That scene sums up, for me, how the world sees the insincerity of our attempts to sell our faith the way a door-to-door salesman sells magazine subscriptions. As a young college student, I was very passionate about Christian Apologetics. I studied numerous books that taught me how to defend my Christian faith using science, history, archaeology, and logic. I got very good at constructing arguments designed to convince the skeptic and the unbeliever that Jesus really was the Son of God and that Christianity was the only way to believe. After several years of learning, and even teaching others, about the basics of Christianity and how to win those arguments of faith, I eventually came to a sobering realization. I realized that, in all my years of study, in all my numerous arguments about the validity of the Christian faith, I had never once argued anyone into trusting Jesus. Along the way I did have some great theological and mentally  stimulating discussions with people, but the fact was that my apologetics had not won a single person to Christ. That’s when I realized that the only apologetic that really matters is the apologetic of your life. No one can argue with your actual, personal experience. I realized that my life needed to reflect the transformational power of Jesus. If not, my logical arguments and brilliant proofs were useless. The real proof of what I was contending for was ultimately found in whether or not the Gospel had any real, transformational impact on my actual, every day life.Anything beyond that was just a mental exercise or an empty philosophical display. I’m certainly much more secure in the grounding of my faith due to the hours spent studying apologetics. There’s nothing wrong with knowing what you believe and why you believe it. But what is best for others, and especially for my own personal spiritual development, is for me to actually live out the Gospel in my daily life. The best apologetic possible is for me to share my personal struggles, failures, experiences and insights with others as I follow Jesus every single day.

This is what the Apostle Peter had in mind when he exhorted the early disciples of Jesus, in 1 Peter 3:15, to “..always be ready to give an answer, a reason for the hope that lies within.” This passage was written with the underlying assumption that the people he was writing to were living radically transformational lives within the culture they were part of. We know this is so because of what we see in both of Peter’s epistles to the Church, and also in the book of Acts. We also know this by looking at the first three hundred years of Church History.

The early followers of Jesus were living lives that were extremely different from those of the pagan world around them. Because of this, Peter encourages them to be ready to explain why they cared for lepers, and fed pagan widows, and shared personal belongings with anyone in need.

These days I fear we in the Church have largely lost this sense of living a different sort of life from those around us. We are not often found acting out such unbridled compassion to strangers, or caught in the act of serving others as Jesus commanded. We have been given a high calling to carry the Gospel of the Kingdom to the ends of the Earth. At the very least we must begin by taking this same Gospel to the end of our street, or to the house next door. We are the people God has chosen to carry the message of hope to a dying world. We are all called to be ambassadors of the Kingdom of God. We are expected to be salt and light wherever we are. How are we accomplishing this?

Early on in my Christian walk I heard the phrase, “The Gospel came to you on its way to someone else.” If so, the very next question is whether or not the Gospel has traveled onward to the next person in the chain. Have we passed the baton? Have we shared freely with others what was so freely given to us? If not, why? What prevents us from sharing the Good News? I  suspect it has something to do with the models we’ve been given. Most of us are not cut out to confront people with clever witnessing tracts at the shopping mall. We do not feel comfortable

approaching total strangers to sell them something they probably don’t want in the first place. We are paralyzed by our fear.

BEING MISSIONAL: A WAY OF LIFE

http://ablessedlifeinjesus.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_16.html

You are a missionary. If you have surrendered your life to Christ and if you are now actively following Jesus, you are a missionary. This book is intended to help you to understand what it means to be a missionary and how to have an impact on the people around you for Christ. This is not a book about how to change the world. It’s about changing your world so that God, through you, might introduce Himself to a few of the people around you.

To think of yourself as a missionary is to realize that you have a mission. Every single day of your life, wherever you are, wherever you go, you are on a mission.

This book is intended to shed some much needed light on what it means to live this way without being false. The important thing to remember is that you are not selling anything. The Gospel is not for sale. You are not a salesman. You don’t need to memorize a pitch. You will not track your success on a chart. You will not have to pretend to be someone else.

The truth is that God has made you exactly who you are. You have talents and abilities that are uniquely your own. You have interests and hobbies.

The Gospel : For Here or To Go? By Keith Giles :Forward

Fresh Bathwater and a Baby Too!

   The words we share with loved ones at the end of our lives tend to be important. That’s why some have said, “Last words are lasting words.” These words tend to be the thing most remembered and leave a lasting impression on those left behind. The last words that Jesus shared with His beloved disciples before He left this planet are very important. They are so important, in fact, that they are repeated in all four gospels and the beginning of the book of Acts.

   We refer to these words as the Great Commission. You get the sense that Jesus wants us to remember them and obey them, and you would be right. Simply summarized, we are to go into all nations and, in the power of the Spirit, preach the gospel and create obedient followers of Christ starting where we are at and extending to the ends of the earth.

   There are many who are speaking and writing about what the gospel is in these transitional days. The conversation is helpful because, as is often the case, for far too long we have minimized God’s multifaceted and deep truth to reflect our shallow knowledge and skimpy experience. Unfortunately, in all the writings, many have extracted what was there to replace it with what wasn’t. The baby has been flushed down the drain with the cloudy bath water.

   Keith Giles, in this book, contributes to the conversation. One of the most important things he adds is that he has put back into the gospel the redemptive atonement and compelling need to speak the truth to others, which has been sadly lacking in many other contributions.

Help others find God

One of the greatest things we can do in life is helping others, and the greatest way we can help someone is to help them find God.  The greatest need all have in life is to know God, our Creator.  We can know God and have a relationship with God  by receiving Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Saviour. In fact, the whole reason Jesus came to earth was to help lost people find God. He said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). 

Jesus is the only cure for sin and separation from God. You just tell them that they can be forgiven of their sins and have a relationship with God by trusting Jesus as their Savior. You can give them this promise from the Bible:

 “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

{ Or give them guide books or http://ablessedlifeinjesus.blogspot.in/p/guidefornewbelievers.html, and others.  Subscribe my site http://ablessedlifeinjesus.blogspot.in/ through email that you can use them. Your aim is not to mould others with your idea but spread the Gospel. So, it is good to follow experience people as I do. Just edit them with some changes to suite your targeted readers and post them. If you post any without change, give credited to the author or the source.}

You may find difficulty to share the Gospel at first. But you will be help by God only if you start doing it. It is the best to tell them your testimony of what Jesus has done for you. The Holy Spirit will work in their hearts as tell them about what God did for you.