Americans spend about $300 Billion on entertainment each year. We obviously love to be entertained. In a culture like this, how can the church ever expect to compete for people’s attention? The answer is simple: We can’t. But happily, we don’t have to compete. The church is not here to entertain people, but to teach sound doctrine. No one can compete with us in that. It’s not easy to find it anyplace else.
The city of Lystra gave Paul both a high point and a low point in his ministry. On the low end, he was stoned by an irate mob, dragged out of town and left for dead. On the high end, it was there that he met Timothy, his “true son in the faith,” a faithful friend and assistant in his work. These are Paul’s intructions to the young man.
The church in the Western World is not very well in tune with the reality of the supernatural. Our regular assumptions cause us to associate supernatural activity with tabloid headlines, superstition or weirdos. Paul wouldn’t want it that way.
When I got to Horizon in San Diego in 1983 it seems to me like the perfect church. It’s still unclear, but it may have gone downhill from the moment I started attending. Honestly, we’re probably all aware by now that the perfect church doesn’t exist. Still the Bible does give us an idea of what we should shoot for – things we can do to make our own church better. As churches go, the one in Thessalonica was pretty good, so this chapter gives us a number of characteristics (I counted 14) that a model church ought to have.
Central Reflections 