Ministries:
Adult | Teens | Children

Pastor's Pen's:
2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001

Sermon Series:
Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
Promised Land Living

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2006

Grace Church of Burlington September 10, 2006 “In the Great Commission the Lord has called us to be—like Peter—fishers of men. We’ve turned the commission around so that we have become merely keepers of the aquarium. Occasionally I take some fish out of your fish bowl and put them into mine, and you do the same with my bowl. But we’re all tending the same fish.”  Sam Shoemaker                                                                                       Tomorrow our nation will remember the fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Many Americans are looking back at how their lives have changed in the half decade since that tumultuous day. With such a traumatic event, we would think that there would also be serious spiritual ramifications.             Sadly, that has not been the case. A new study by The Barna Group examined data from nine national surveys, involving interviews with more than 8,600 adults, conducted right before the attacks and at regular intervals since then. Shockingly, the study shows that despite an intense surge in religious activity and expression in the weeks immediately following 9/11 the faith of Americans is virtually indistinguishable today compared to pre-attack conditions. Barna’s tracking surveys looked at 19 dimensions of spirituality and beliefs. Remarkably, none of those 19 indicators are statistically different from the summer before the attacks!             In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, half of all Americans said their faith helped them cope with the shock and uncertainty. The change most widely reported was a significant spike in church attendance, with some churches experiencing more than double their normal crowd on the Sunday after the shocking event. However, by the time January 2002 rolled around, churchgoing was back to pre-attack levels, and has remained consistent in the five years since. And other religious behaviors, if they were affected at all, found equilibrium even more quickly. As of October 2001, Americans’ engagement in Bible reading and prayer was no different than pre-attack levels and has been essentially consistent from that point on.             The director of this Barna study, David Kinnaman, put the findings in context. “Many Christian leaders predicted that terrorism on U.S. soil would catalyze a spiritual awakening in the country. The first few weeks were promising. But people quickly returned to their standard, faith-as-usual lives: within a month, most of their spiritual fervor was gone. Within 90 days, surprisingly few people were pursuing important questions about faith and spirituality. Now, five years removed from that fateful day, spiritually speaking, it’s as if nothing significant ever happened. People used faith like a giant band-aid – it helped people deal with the ugliness of the event but it offered little in the way of deep healing and it was discarded after a brief period of use.”             So what does all of this mean for us at Grace Church? It means that our mission has not changed. Though God does periodically intervene and give the lost a wake up call like 9/11, His normal evangelistic tool is us...you and me. Though tragedy does sometimes wake up the lost, typically a consistent committed believer in their “world” is the tool that God more often uses to reach them. Most lost people come to Christ because a believer at work, in their neighborhood or even in their family, lives a consistent Christian life and reaches out to them. God’s plan is incarnational rather than sensational.             The Great Commission has not changed. Amazingly, God used twelve men  2000 years ago to turn their world upside down. And He does not have a Plan B...His plan has not changed. He wants to do the same today.             The mission of the church, the responsibility of every believer, is not just to help people cope with tragedy but to break through their spiritual hard-headedness and orient them towards God’s deeper purposes for their life.             Are you doing your part to help us fulfill our mission? Are you consistently praying for lost friends? Are you seeking to live a committed Christian life that is a testimony to the lost around you? Are you reaching out to the lost that God has placed in your life? Are you sharing the Gospel with them? It’s true that our lost world does need a wake up call, but what they need more are Christians who are wide awake and on fire for God! They need Christians who really believe in heaven and hell and that everyone will spend eternity in one place or the other! Because Satan is a spiritual terrorist that has been destroying souls for millennia. We must be proactive! We must be committed to the mission! God has only one plan...it’s us!