We don't need everyone?

This post by Gary has me fired and stalking around my office ready to get going. I'm tired of this idea that we have to try to keep everyone who ever attends the church. Satan uses PEOPLE to try to destroy ministries and we let it happen because we don't want to offend anyone. We need to offend some people.

This is my opinion and mine only, let me make this clear because I know many in the church will disagree with me. However, it is the senior pastor's job to get the vision for the church from God. If you are not on board for that vision, it means you are not plugged in and involved with making God's vision happen. Which generally means you are causing problems. The thing is, there are a million churches out there, and one of them probably has a vision you can plug into and serve. Find it. Go to it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We need to be more concerned with who comes in our doors than who goes out them. We need to be concerned about reaching the unchurched, not keep every Christian happy. If we try to make everyone happy, we will stagnate and die. If you don't have laser focus on God's vision, people will distract you and get you off mission. Being off mission is the same thing as doing absolutely nothing for God.

And as pastors, we need to guard against becoming too comfortable. The next person to oppose our vision may be someone who is the largest giver, or someone who helped start the church. We need to be willing to let EVERYONE go for the vision of God. If we are willing to let go of problem makers, we can reach MORE people for Jesus and that is the ultimate vision.

Just look at what has happened to General Motors. They tried to make a different car for absolutely everyone. Before you know it they were producing so many different styles, they didn't do any of them very well at all. They need to scale back to two or three lines and focus on making those great. We don't need to offer everything people want. If we do that we are never good at anything. We need to focus on a few things God wants us to do and do them well. Everything should be geared toward creating a welcoming community for non-Christians and training Christians to reach others. That's it. Everything else is just fluff.

This is why we need to cast vision in everything we do. Every sermon, lesson, everything should be tied back to our need for Jesus and the church's vision for reaching people for him.