church at watershed

ok, this isn’t a line of people waiting to get into a church for the h1n1 vaccine, but i just wanted to give you a glimpse of the line i saw this past saturday.  so i didn’t realize that the department of health was giving the h1n1 vaccine at different clinics for free.  i know, i know…that tells you how much i pay attention to the news and what not.  so i found out this past weekend when my sister and brother-in-law came to visit.  she is pregnant and i guess they are out of the vaccine where she lives in michigan.  sonya, wonderful sister that she is, looked up  clinics around us and it just so happened that there was one while my in-laws were with us that was giving the vaccine out for free!!!  so we decided to go stand in line to get this vaccine.  as it turned out, the only one in my immediate family that could get the vaccine was Amelia, but we bought her a baby doll for being so tough.  we pulled up to a church where the clinic was set up, and the line twisted out the sanctuary into the lobby, through the doors, down the sidewalk, around the side of the church and into the massive front yard of the church where it wound back and forth like the line for the raptor at cedar point on a saturday in july.  it was insane!!  they gave us tickets to make sure that we could get the vaccine.  when the tickets ran out, people would be turned away.

but as i stood there waiting and watching the people in the line, i couldn’t help but notice that there were whites, blacks, latinos, asians, middle easterners; all invariably from every walk of life and religion or lack thereof.  there we stood, in a huge line waiting to get into a church for the cure to some pandemic disease.  i thought, these people are waiting to get in to “God’s house” for the cure to a disease that is wreaking havoc on many and causing panic on the rest.  they are hoping that they will get the cure and not be turned away to the sound of “we’re sorry, we’re all out.”  i could only think of the fact that the church has the eternal cure for sin, yet instead of having people waiting in droves for hours to get in, we have churches closing their doors and dying because people are turned off by us or worse, we aren’t doing what it takes to find them and bring them to Jesus.  i was saddened by what i saw that day.  my thoughts turned to watershed.  i don’t want people to come to watershed in droves because of my pride.  i want people to come to Jesus as they realize he is what they need.  i want the people of watershed to be a church that truly shows the world around us what it means to follow Christ in a community of love and servanthood.  i believe that watershed exists because there are tons of people in the greater columbus area that don’t want to be part of any church based on past experiences, and it is our job to show them what “church” really means.  i want watershed to be a church dechurched and unchurched people want to attend.

here’s the deal…i believe it was craig groeschel who said, “if we want to reach people that aren’t being reached, then we have to do things that aren’t being done.”  i whole heartedly agree.  so i leave you with this…

what do we need to do differently in order to reach people for Christ that aren’t being reached by the church today?