[This is my third and final post in my “Vintage Wednesday” series on the "Either/Or Dilemma faced by many churches, re-written/updated from a blogpost back in December of 2010.]

Recently I finished reading “The Church of Irresistible Influence” by Robert Lewis. He believes that “contrary to much evidence, the church does not exist for the sake of the church. It exists for the sake of the world.” He says that most Christians are becoming more and more comfortable with each other while becoming more and more disconnected with the world. We live in fairly isolated communities with programs that meet our needs primarily. In terms of Christ’s entry into our world, we’ve lost our ability to incarnate the truth.

Christ left the safety zone of heaven to bring transformational truth into our world. The law from unapproachable deity abovedelivered at Sinai hadn’t fully accomplished God’s plan, hence the Word had to come down and become flesh (John 1:14). Jesus was God with us, taking on skin and bone to walk among us. God had to speak our language in our context in order for us to get it. By building a bridge from the eternal realm to us in time and space, Christ set us free to transcend our world and enter his (Ephesians 2:6).

We have God’s model for how to live out grace and truth…how to be on mission while staying the course. If in fact the church embraced a holistic gospel and focused its energies on becoming all things to all people in order to draw them into the Kingdom (1 Corinthians 9:19-23), perhaps the either/or dilemma would start to disappear. I believe we need a both/and approach that builds bridges to our communities and ensures a vibrant faith for future generations.

I close this series of posts with two reality check questions I once heard that may help you keep the conversation going: If your church doors closed tomorrow would anyone in your community notice? And secondly, would anyone care?