THE LOCAL CHURCH
IS THE
HOPE OF THE WORLD!

A pastor friend recently challenged me to begin writing more frequently, so I’ve started blogging again. Not too consistently, I might add... but its picking up. It’s been a wonderful exercise in discipline and has helped me clarify thoughts. I felt like a natural place to start would be to interact with one of the books I have recently read, so I started blogging about Chuck Swindoll’s most current book, The Church Awakening. It has been a unique experience, in part because of the content of the book.

While the ultimate aim of the book is to offer some encouragement, inspiration, and focus for the church, the first chapters don’t start out that way! Swindoll points out the drift that has occurred in the church. He chides the leaders of today’s church for allowing spiritual erosion and decay. He paints a dismal picture of the problems of the modern church.

As I’ve blogged day by day, I noticed a trend... NEGATIVITY! I’m working through these early chapters which are primarily rebuke! But obviously, casting stones is not Swindoll’s ultimate aim, and it’s certainly not mine.

The book is focused on reestablishing a life-altering church with Christ as Lord and Master. The publisher’s review calls it “Illuminating and empowering” and tauts that “this volume will ignite a revolution in the way Christians “do church” for years to come.”

While I still have several days worth of blogs that cover the problems and challenges before getting to the opportunities and solutions... I wanted to take a small hiatus from that line of thought and focus on the beauty of the church... Christ’s Church!



Years ago, while attending a conference at Willow Creek Community Church, I heard Pastor Bill Hybels say, “The local church is the hope of the world.” With great passion and conviction, he inspired the attendees to give themselves for the church!

In His book Courageous Leadership, Hybels comments “There is nothing like the local church when it’s working right. Its beauty is indescribable. Its power is breathtaking. Its potential is unlimited. It comforts the grieving and heals the broken in the context of community. It builds bridges to seekers and offers truth to the confused. It provides resources for those in need and opens its arms to the forgotten, the downtrodden, the disillusioned. It breaks the chains of addictions, frees the oppressed, and offers belonging to the marginalized of this world. Whatever the capacity for human suffering, the church has a greater capacity for healing and wholeness.
Still to this day, the potential of the local church is almost more than I can grasp. No other organization on earth is like the church. Nothing even comes close.” ~Hybels, Courageous Leadership.

May we be reminded that Jesus owns the church...He bought it with His own blood. He calls it His Bride, His Body! May we be inspired to follow the Lord in humble, holy obedience and BE the church that He intended!

and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. Ephesians 5:27