The debate went on; you can read it for yourself in Acts 15 and 16. Finally the apostle Peter stood up and said, in effect, “Why are you making difficult what God made so easy? Why are you making complicated what God made so uncomplicated? Why would you put boundaries and barriers up, when Jesus died to take down the barriers, and knock down the walls?”
The church finally decided that outsiders would not be required to become Jewish before they became Christian; they would not be required to keep the Jewish law (those early followers didn’t even do a very good job of that themselves). The result? “The churches were strengthened in faith, and they grew daily in numbers” (Acts 16:5).
Now, here’s the challenge for Imagine Church, and for every church today, for that matter: there is the constant pull, every single day, away from the focus on outsiders, to focus on insiders. For more churches, it’s never urgent to reach people. However, Jesus didn’t say he came to seek and to save the found, but the lost. The people who are disconnected from God.
Every church celebrates something. At Imagine Church, we have chosen to celebrate life change. We believe it’s what heaven celebrates. The Bible tells us that when one individual does a 180 away from a life of sin toward God, that the angels celebrate. Keeping the focus on outsiders, rather than insiders, is what keeps us on mission — because this is what God has called us to do.
In the name of the One who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
Bruce Jones, Pastor and Co-Creator, Imagine Church of the Carolinas
It was one of those boring church meetings when someone introduced a resolution about newcomers. “They’ve got to become like us first,” he said. “They’ve got to learn our secrets, and our formula, and our dress code, our laws, our rules — they’ve got to learn all that stuff before they can join us!”