I glanced at an article by James Nored yesterday, filed it, will go back to it. (Do you ever process your email that way? Some days there is too much to handle in detail.) The article concluded that we have a “mission deficit”. In the same way that our national government seems incapable of establishing sufficient priorities and making hard decisions to deal with an overwhelming deficit, the church has misaligned its priorities and failed to make hard decisions. Our resources are going to things that will not solve the long-term problem.
Our world is suffering from a serious crisis: a Jesus crisis! (See an article on this topic, and several other new articles that focus on missions at the “recent posts” section of my Articles Index. The church in many places does not want to hear that there is a problem. We are happy in our ignorance–head in sand syndrome. We need to renew mission, and missions. We must live our lives with the world in view. The church is not reservoir but conduit. In many places our conduit is blocked, and the gospel is dripping rather than gushing.