Fan the Flame: Chapter 1 (2 weeks)
To The Core: Chapter 2 (3 weeks)
Stand: Chapter 3 (2 weeks)
Finish the Race: Chapter 4 (3 weeks)

We will be taking a break between chapters 2 and 3 for the One Prayer series led by Lifechurch.tv and discuss the notion of the church being an Unstoppable force when united under Christ as it’s head! This series will feature me and one other staff member, plus two other pastors via video! You won’t want to miss a week over the next few months. These are shaping up to be a real faith building time on our church. Come ready to grow and be used by God!

Imagine for a moment, if all 6.7 billion people on the face of the planet were represented by one single “global village” of 100 people. What does our world really look like?

• Out of 100 people:
• 60 would be Asian
• 14 would be African
• 12 would be European
• 8 would be Latin American
• 5 would be American or Canadian
• 1 would be from the South Pacific
• 51 would be male; 49 would be female
• 82 would be non-white; 18 white
• 67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian

Now, contrast those statistics with your church on Sunday morning. Are we changing the world with the Gospel, or are we just sitting in our little circles pretending that the rest of the world doesn’t exist?

My first thought is that much of this is related to the demographics of your community and while missions opens your church up to this possibility you are mainly serving the community that surrounds you (a premise I will talk about in another post: How the Neighborhood Church Makes a Comeback). Then as I considered further…every community has diversity. We may not have the diversity mentioned in the article above (in the US probably not even close), but I believe the idea of the article to be one of principle rather than statistics. How open are you to people that don’t look like you or even act like you for that matter.

As followers of Christ we should be used to the idea of being around people who aren’t like us. We are strangely and fascinatingly wierd as a people. Christ makes us that way. Are you rubbing elbows with people who need to see that? Do you intentionally engage them for the sake of Christ in their life? Maybe, if nothing else, you will be more open to the idea after this short little read!