Church time

If you think about it, Jesus’ whole ministry was focused on meeting people during the course of their life.  Jesus encountered people at the well, in their home, while they were fishing, at the tax table,over dinner, at a wedding, and on the road.  Jesus occasionally encountered leaders from the local synagogue, but most of the time they came to him.

Very little of Jesus’ ministry has to do with teaching in the temple.  I guess there was that time when he was twelve and he questioned the temple leaders (Luke 2:46), and the time he proclaimed the word of Isaiah that identified him as the messiah. (Luke 4:16-18 – which also points out that it was Jesus custom to go to the Synagogue on the Sabbath)  And then there was the time that he pointed out the widow’s mite.  (Mark 12:42)  So I guess Jesus had his fair share of “Church” time.  However, when the gospel writers documented Jesus time and ministry, there was an obvious overweighting of time that Jesus committed to caring for people on their everyday path of life.  And then there is that Great commission thing that Jesus left hanging over all our heads.  (Acts 1:8)  If I remember right, Jesus did not say go find the nearest Synagogue and make disciples, he said go into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  The smallest unit Jesus designated was the city of Jerusalem, and then he pushed them to exceed the barriers of their known world.  Jesus Obviously did not want the disciples hanging around in the temples trying to change the minds of the Pharisees, he wanted them out where the people were, making disciples.  And if all that is not enough, we find that Jesus sent his disciples out to the world in this same manner several times.

I guess here is the question:  If we consider ourselves disciples, why is it that we spend the majority of our time fixating over the details of the temple; worship, education, family ministries, music… and the list goes on.  Why don’t we do like Jesus did and get out to meet people in the path of their daily life?  Why don’t we care enough to find out what is troubling them, to pray for them, to listen to them?

Jesus’ has commissioned us to make disciples in the world, not to keep filling, patching, and drilling more holes in the structure of our existing denominational institutions.