The global Church must look more just like the early church if it desires to fulfil the Great Commission by 2033, says Rick Warren.
With just eight years to go until the two,000th anniversary of the Church, he said there have been quite a few things Christians must do if the ambitious goal is to be met. These include modelling the early Church in love and prayer.
“Most of our churches are only known for a whole lot of talk,” he said.
Speaking on the World Evangelical Alliance’s general assembly on Wednesday night, he said that what people on the planet really want is love and that while a whole lot of churches might imagine of themselves as loving, he said that in his experience, what this really meant was “we love the people who find themselves already here”.
“Love is the magnet that attracted people to Christ,” he said, sharing his motto that “growing churches love and loving churches grow”.
“If any church genuinely loves people, you should have to lock the door to maintain people out since the world is hungry for love.
“They’re not hungry for a few of the other things we’re offering.”
He added, “I’ve never met a human being on the planet who’s not hungry for love.”
He cautioned pastors especially that in the event that they need to construct a loving church, then they themselves have to be loving.
“I’ve met a whole lot of pastors, particularly in large churches, they love crowds and hate people,” he said.
Similarly, seminary students have come as much as him and told him how much they love to evangelise, but this, he suggested, was the mistaken focus.
“They think that’s going to impress me. It doesn’t impress me. You may identical to attention. You like everybody you. You like being focused on. You like the frenzy of adrenaline. Honestly I don’t care when you love to evangelise. I need to know: do you’re keen on the people you preach to?”
If the Great Commission goes to be fulfilled, Warren said that the Church needed to equip every believer to share the Gospel.
“We must train every believer to evangelise the Good News all over the place,” he said.
“You’re probably never going to face behind a pulpit but God has called every Christian to speak the Good News so now we have to coach every believer how you can do that.”
Fulfilling the Great Commission will not be only about evangelism. Warren said there was also a must train those that are already within the Church “to be doers of the Word, not only hearers”.
He said: “It’s not enough to know the word. The problem in Christianity today? We Christians know excess of we’re doing. But we don’t get blessed for knowing the Word of God. We get blessed for doing the Word of God.”
Churches all over the world are on the point of rejoice the two,000th anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus and the birth of the Church in 2033.
Warren challenged evangelicals to think beyond people in their very own neighbourhoods, and seek to succeed in people from every tribe and tongue, including in other countries, saying his church – Saddleback in California – was the just one in Christian history to plant a church in 197 countries.
He went on to say that the Great Commission is not going to be fulfilled as long as there are people on the planet who still should not have the Bible in their very own language.
“Millions of individuals still do not have a Bible of their language. Are our churches doing anything about that?” he said.
“There’s still a few thousand languages on the planet that haven’t any Bible.
“If we’re going to finish the Great Commission, now we have to have God’s Word in everybody’s language.
“No one should need to learn a recent language in an effort to hear ‘Jesus loves you’.”
It was the second time that Warren, writer of The Purpose Driven Life, preached at the overall assembly of the World Evangelical Alliance. In his first address earlier within the week, he said that the Great Commission could only be fulfilled if the Church has an efficient plan in place.
“If we learn not only the message but the tactic of Jesus, we’ll win the world in the subsequent eight years,” he said.
