Church Planting Movement

Have I told you about my class? No? Well, I am taking an online course entitled "Simple Church Revolution." It found me, really. I had been reading a blog entitled SimpleChurch Journal aka HouseChurchBlog. Through that blog, I downloaded a book, Simple/House Church Revolution. I really enjoyed and was challenged by it. Well, I received this e-mail from a Roger Thoman inviting those of us who had downloaded the book to take this course. It is online and something new he was trying. I am getting a lot out of it and it is really challenging me and my views of the Body of Christ, the priesthood of all believers, etc. I wanted to share with you something I have been mulling on since our last class. Below is a snippet of something we discussed and my response/thoughts on it. I would love to hear yours!

Floyd McClung offered his 3 reasons why we do not see faster reproduction in the Christianized West:

1. Lack of obedience to the word: One example: followers of Jesus don't pursue finding the person of peace, finding one who's oikos is open, then making disciples among them, as Jesus instructed in Luke 10
2. Traditional ways of doing church encourage a "watch the main man on sunday" mentality instead of every believer getting out and making disciples through a lifestyle of obedience.
3. A lack of willingness to suffer and sacrifice. It takes sacrifice to plant churches and Western believers don't believe in sacrifice.

I think that his first point is interesting. I find that people either get so focused on "relationship building" they never/rarely get around to actually sharing the gospel or get so impassioned by the message they neglect to build relationship/look for the person of peace and blast people with the message. You often hear people say they would accept Christ if it wasn't for His people. I think that does relate back to a lack of obedience on our parts. We live one way, say another or pretend that we don't instead of being honest when we fall. People respect honesty, especially if you admit to failing but get up and try again.
The third point definitely rings true. I believe that we all get so immersed in our own lives and doing our own thing that we don't live as living sacrifices. We often sacrifice our spiritual life on the altar of our physical life. We forget that the here and now is but a vapor--that we have this little blip of time to sacrifice the seen for the unseen. When we are with the Lord, there will be no more sacrifice. No more choosing Him over lesser things. If we don't value the Lord over everything else, why will unbelievers see any value in our message?

Thoughts? Comments? Respectful disagreements? I would love to listen and dialogue with you on this!