Pastor's Corner

for Sunday Feb 22nd
Is preaching the gospel intolerant?
The General Synod of the Church of England is to discuss a motion calling on it to recognize explicitly its aim of converting people to Christianity. The motion calls for bishops to give extra training and encouragement to clergy to evangelize non-Christians. What?! Why would any church be debating whether to preach the gospel or not? Why in the world would it be necessary to ask bishops to train clergy for evangelism? Is it not a given that we need to preach the gospel? Now we may be afraid to preach the gospel but surely we all know that Christ has commanded us to preach the gospel with the explicit goal of converting people to Jesus Christ. So why are some churches questioning this mandate? Well, unfortunately, there are many who believe that to convert people to Christ implies that our religion is better than theirs, and this is intolerant. These people believe that preaching the gospel will damage our relationship with other religions - Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. Now nobody wants to be accused of being intolerant, but the reason we preach the gospel is because we believe that since Jesus has born the punishment for our sins He is the ONLY one through whom we can be saved. And since we also believe that all those who die without the forgiveness of their sins in Jesus will go to everlasting punishment, it is imperative that we preach the message of salvation to ALL (that includes Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons, etc) those who are lost. Jesus warned us that the gospel would be offensive; He warned that since they hated Him they will hate us too; He warned that if they called Him a devil they would call us devils too. We don't want to be offensive in preaching the gospel but we must not remove the offense of the gospel, which is salvation through Jesus alone. We don't need to debate this, we simply need to do it - with sensitivity; with love and compassion but also with clarity - preach the gospel.
Pastor Don.