FI Fridays: For Them

Every Friday this fall, I’m doing a series titled “First Impressions Fridays.”  These posts are specifically designed for the First Impressions Teams at all of our campuses, but hey, read it anyway.  You might learn something useful.

Churches are notorious for building the kingdom.  Unfortunately, it’s not the kingdom with a capital “K” that the Bible talks about.  It’s our own corporate kingdoms that we outfit with our amenities, our creature comforts, our traditions, rules, and regulations.  After a group of people do life together for a while, the kingdom of US…or at least the kingdom of ME…is bound to rear its ugly head.

But if we’re going to reach people for the Kingdom, we must refuse to build a kingdom.  Our facilities and styles and programming and even our language must speak more to the guest than it does to us.  It’s for them, because the gospel is for them.  Oh sure, the gospel is for us too, but if we preach the gospel to ourselves on a daily basis we’ll remember that one of our roles as believers is to reach others.  And if we’re going to reach others, we can’t be scratching our own itches.

At the end of the day, it’s not for you.  It’s not for me.  And really, it’s not even for them.  But it is about Jesus.  And since Jesus is for you and he’s for them, then we’ve got to build his Kingdom, not ours, and open it up to them.

Clear as mud?  I thought so.