Mission articles
Reaching a lost generation
If you and your church are serious about reaching a lost generation, here are some things you could do:
1 Make sure the basics are in place
- You need to make sure you understand what the gospel is.
It is the good news concerning Jesus Christ dying in the place of sinners. It is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes (Romans 1:16). Be clear on the difference between the gospel and religion. Religion is obeying in an attempt to be accepted by God. The gospel is knowing that through faith we are accepted, and therefore obeying.
- You need to understand how God saves people. God saves a person by giving them new life and granting to them repentance. Only he can do this, but he gives us the responsibility of making known the gospel so that a person may believe and be saved.
- Knowing it is only God who can give new life drives us to pray. Therefore we need to understand the central role of prayer if we are to achieve our goal of ‘reaching a lost generation’.
- One other essential ingredient needs to be in place. We need to understand how love for Christ should be our chief motive in all we do. We love him because he first loved us (1 John 5:19). The more we understand the extent of our sin, the more we will understand how much he has loved us in forgiving us. When we begin to see the extent to which he loves us, that is our motivation for loving him through service. This is why Paul’s prayer, that we may comprehend the width, length, depth and height of Christ’s love, is so vital (Ephesians 3:14-21). Being gripped by the awesome love of Christ is the fuel for the engine of service. We want to reach a lost generation for his sake!
2 Now let us do something
C H Spurgeon was stirring up his students with his customary zeal when he said, ‘God save us from living in comfort while sinners are sinking into hell.’ His exhortation is simple: ‘Brethren, do something; do something; do something!’ (‘Lectures to my Students’). We clearly need to do something, but what are we to do?
If we are convinced that our role in the salvation of a soul is to bring the gospel to people, we need to make the proclaiming of the gospel the central ministry of the church. This, more than anything else, is the task of the church. By proclaiming the gospel, sinners are saved and the saints edified.
Some have the false idea that the gospel is a message only suitable for unbelievers and Christians need something else. If a church does believe that, it is easy to see how preaching the gospel could be limited to only once a week (or even less!). Hardly, then, the central ministry of the church! Yet we have already seen that a Christian is brought to love and serve God more when he comes to understand how much he has been loved. Surely we see God’s love at its clearest in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. The unsaved need to hear the message of the cross that they may be saved, but the same message is also needed to motivate Christians for service.
If we take the biblical picture and liken the preaching of the gospel to the sowing of seed, we realise that we need to sow as much as we can in the whole of the field if we are to harvest a good crop. We need therefore to multiply the proclaiming of the gospel. We need as many people as possible to proclaim the gospel as often as possible in as many places as possible. This month’s issue of Grace gives us a number of possibilities of how to fulfil these aims, but remember they are only that – possibilities! God has not given us a blue print of methodology to reach the lost. We are to ask, ‘God, what do you want us to do?’
We are then to look at how God has gifted us. What is the use of starting something that no one in the church is any good at? Why not start something you can do? We can then begin to train God’s people to think and work as a team, which is essential if we are to multiply the proclaiming of the gospel.
Our prayer is that God may use this issue of Grace to prompt us to take more seriously our task of ‘reaching a lost generation’.
If you are serious, however, one more thing needs to be said. Do not be discouraged and put off by opposition. We have an enemy in Satan, who will not stand idly by and allow the gospel to be proclaimed without opposing it and you. If we fail to understand that we will soon be discouraged and the work will not get done.
An elderly lady from Leeds a few months ago was relating to me with sadness how she had seen the planting of a church as a child, seen it grow and prosper, then decline and finally close within her lifetime. I asked her, ‘Why do you think the church closed?’ Her answer is very interesting, ‘We never had anyone who was prepared to have a door slammed in his face.’
Are you prepared for that? Harder still, are you ready for sharp criticism from within church circles, because if you attempt anything for Christ it will not suit everyone. If you are ready for that, you are ready to respond to C H Spurgeon’s exhortation, ‘Brethren, do something, do something, do something!’