The Disappearing Church

Why is it many of the countries that started out to be "Christian" are no longer "Christian". For example, The country of Turkey was know as Asia Minor when the New Testament was being written. Paul had set up different churches there one of them being Ephesus. What happened? Through the Christian education course I took, I learned that part of the reason is we are not equipping our next generation to be soldiers for Christ nor we develop them to be greater than us. This is especially true in the Asian context. Asians are taught that we should transmit 90% of our knowledge and leave 10% so that we would not be replaced. However, that is not what Jesus did. He taught them to completely trust in Him since He and the Father are one. When they did so they would be able to do greater things than what Christ on Earth (John 14:11-12). Since the church is Christ's body, we need to follow Christ's teaching and example. When we take a look at Act 2:39-47 and Matt 28:18-20, we see that what Jesus commanded his disciples and how they followed them.

In Matt 28:18-19, Jesus instructors his disciples to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that He had taught them. From this passage we learn part of the reason why the church is disappearing. A lot of times they are only focused on the first two parts of Christ's command. They have a lot of outreach events and people would be saved and would get baptized but not taught to observe everything that Jesus had taught. Even if they are, a lot of times they are not taught how to live out their faith. Therefore, faith becomes head knowledge and they do not see a need to go to church or to worship God. What makes things even worst is a lot of God's people are only fed on Sunday during Sunday service or Sunday School. Afterwards they are sent into the world to face people who are wolves in sheep clothing.

The early church took a different approach. The 12 apostle of Christ followed Matt 28:18-19 completely and the Lord kept adding to the church daily. They realized that they need to not only evangelize and baptize but also to disciple believers to be soldiers for Christ. Acts 2:42 describe how new converts were constantly devoting themselves to the instruction of the apostles, breaking of bread and praying. God saw the early church was the good and faithful servants described in the Parable of the Talents (Matt 25:14-30) so He increase their numbers. Because they had followed the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ completely, God was pleased and increased their numbers.

If the church is to survive the 21th Century, we need to follow the model of the early church and disciple our converts to follow all the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ so that they will be soldiers for Christ.