What’s Missing from the North American Church?

Missing Him: 31 Days of Calling on Jesus When You’re Missing Hope

What’s Missing from the North American Church?

In the heat of Uganda this past July, I wrote a letter, a post, I keep returning to, igniting with, a post that’s gone far and wide and sort of went crazy, A Letter to the North American Church. That’s what’s fiery in my bones… The church is the beautiful bride that Christ — the one we’ve been Missing – is returning for and I am passionate about the church, committed to her growth, her relentless flourishing, her certain thriving, preparing herself for His soon-coming. How do we, the church, grow and strengthen into the ready and beautiful bride?
I quietly have asked many of my friends to pray for the church over the next several weeks, and share with us here their own Letter to the North American Church.

In past weeks, my heart-sister, Patsy Clairmont shared her letter with us… and my other Women of Faith sister, Elisa Morgan, shared her letter with us.

Today, Scot McKnight (PhD, Nottingham), a Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, Lombard, Illinois, and author of several books, including the award-winning The Jesus Creed, The King Jesus Gospel, One.Life, and The Blue Parakeet, as well as Galatians and 1 Peter in the NIV Application Commentary series — comes to the farm porch with his letter of what’s pressing on him hard for the North American church and it cut me to the quick — and speaks to this Missing Him .

~by Scot McKnight

Dear North American Church,

Bring the Bible back to church.

Sorting through a new catalog that came my way recently I noticed a list of “Home Bible Study” guides — and they were on all sorts of “relevant” topics and “heart felt needs” like marriage and children and social justice and influencing public education policies.

All important, of course, but something was missing.

So I decided to Google some well-known churches on sermon topics.

And I found talks on fear, getting through life’s difficulties, forgiveness, healthy families, and the topics go on and on.

They are all important, but something was missing.

The next day another catalog arrived in my mailbox from one of my favorite publishers. The same. Books and books and books about topics and topics and topics.

Something was missing .

What was missing was what struck me when the ad on my blog appeared, an ad of a book by a pastor and the book was about — the Bible!

That’s what we’re missing today: books about the Bible, books about the Bible’s books.

Titles like Deuteronomy, Psalms, Zechariah, Luke, 2 Corinthians, or Titus.

Not books that use the Bible to talk about topics, not books that invade the Bible to cull information about what we want to talk about, not books that pretend to be biblical by adding Bible verses to something learned in the social sciences or from life’s experiences — but books that grasp our hand and lead us to the table to sit down and listen to Scripture. …

To hear what Moses said, to hear what David said, to hear was Ezekiel said, to hear what Jesus said, to hear what Paul said, to hear what Peter said, to hear what John said, and to hear what the author of Hebrews – whoever wrote that book – said.

What is missing is a belief in the Bible so secure that we can open up any book in that big book and know God still speaks.

God gave us a gift — the gift of the Bible — a gift with one postcard after another of God’s message to us.

Instead of asking the Bible to talk to us about what we’d like to hear — what we need is to be led to the Bible to hear what God has said.

If we will but listen, God will speak.

He’s that kind of God.

Scot McKnight

Northern Seminary

Scot McKnight’s thought-provoking read, the King Jesus Gospel makes a plea for us to recover the old gospel as that which is still new and still fresh.

The book stands on four arguments:

that the gospel is defined by the apostles in 1 Corinthians 15 as the completion of the Story of Israel in the saving Story of Jesus;

that the gospel is found in the Four Gospels;

that the gospel was preached by Jesus;

and that the sermons in the Book of Acts are the best example of gospeling in the New Testament.

The King Jesus Gospel ends with practical suggestions about evangelism and about building a gospel culture …. Knowing what the gospel in all it’s fullness really is — is central to not missing Jesus. The King Jesus Gospel’s a sharpening book that was part of a sermon series for our local faith family….

This is Day 2 in a #31Days series:

Missing Him: 31 Days of Jesus – and not missing what can’t be missed.

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Dare to take your invitation to not miss — what can’t be missed?

Looking forward to what the next #31Days hold with you… and Him.