Inevitably, it happens.  Almost every time I’ve gone out street preaching I get the question asked, “Don’t you think you’re offending more people than you are helping hear your message?”  I’ve developed a nice answer to that which I’ll explain in another post.  But right now I want to focus on one thing. 

Often, somewhere in my response I’ll say, “What do you think, ‘Go, preach the gospel’ is supposed to look like? It certainly isn’t sitting in a church pew Sunday after Sunday hoping new people show up.”  Somewhere in the past 2000 years we’ve twisted the commission of Jesus to the point where it’s completely opposite to what He originally said.

We’ve changed the commission from “Go and tell”, to “Come and listen”.  If you drive around town you see billboards and other ads inviting people to come into church and listen to a message instead of people on the street corners proclaiming the gospel.  It’s like the people of the church have said, “Instead of us going to them, why don’t we tell them to come to us.”  So they put up these billboards and signs and then drive to church on Sunday anxiously waiting and wondering if it worked!

Look, I know there may be better ways to preach the gospel to the world, but I know for sure that the “Come and listen” mindset isn’t the right attitude.

I would suggest reading the gospels and finding out how Jesus went about preaching the gospel and how He intended His followers to do the same.  You may be quite encouraged.

What do you think?

[tags]Street Preaching, Open Air Preaching, Street Preachers[/tags]