Return to jer-USA-lem

I am a big believer in missions. I have given deeply and gladly to overseas ventures in the mission field. I believe based on everything I see that the efforts are bearing much fruit. Those fields have now taken the job of spreading the gospel to a lost world seriously and effectively. God bless them as those seeds planted bear much fruit. They do it better and more efficiently than most American Missionaries can today. That’s the model.

But my concern today is for a much more desperate mission field. One for which I believe the church in America will be held to account if we fumble this ball. The blood of these people will be held against our account if we don’t try.

We have been so busy in Samaria and the ends of the earth we are losing Jer-USA-lem.

The book by Bill O’Reily about the rise of secularism and Ann Coulter’s book Godless are books written by those outside the church that tell me this battle is being lost.

I live in a typical cross-section of America: Prosperous, comfortable, safe, pagan and hell bound.

Churches have little intramural squabbles; from time to time they borrow a sheepling till that sheepling moves on to another church. Few real converts are being made. Few real disciples are created. Little spiritual maturity is developed as the Bible calls for in Ephesians 4 so saints are released to do the work of the ministry. The hired guns are expected to do all the work. They do what they can but they and we are failing.

Churches are waxing emptier every day. We keep saying we need a revival. We need to be vived first before we can be re-vived.

This rant comes because I visited several churches and church leadership in my last trip to the hinterlands. I was very discouraged with what I heard. We have no clue. This truly is going to hell in a handbasket.

Things are a mess; we have too much backscratching going on and too little warfare where the Devil owns the turf. Spiritual timidity born of the fear of man has paralyzed the church.

My friend John Armstrong has a word for what needs to be done. We as the church in America must see ourselves as a missional church. We are on the foreign field. We have millions of pagan lost souls headed for an eternity in hell if we don’t tell them. They live all around us.

My Pastor Friend Olfunso in Nigeria is more responsible and his brethren for new souls in the kingdom times 100 than the average Christian Leader or Pastor in the USA.

From here on out I’m going to be focused on how we well reach the most desperate lost mission field on the planet, the USA. We used to be the second most missionary receiving country in the world. We should be first. We are that lost. Come home from Samaria and the ends of the earth is the Macedonia cry ringing in my ears.

Let’s see to our jer-USA-lem first. That is the most scriptural thing we can do.