In our Bible study group, we went through a study by Reggie McNeil called “The Present Future.” One of the points that really stuck out to me was how most churches have the attitude of “come and get it. We have a corner on the spiritual market, and if you want to know about God, you have to come here.” This attitude makes the church into more of a Pharisee from Jesus’ day than the outreach tool that God had planned. Mr. McNeil said the church was acting like a big desalination plant, just sucking all of the salt out of the Earth rather than putting salt into the Earth.
Really, the church should be looking for ways to impact the people around it. Today, I read an awesome post on Tony Morgan‘s site about the information people (including businesses and churches) put on their electronic signs. That they put a lot of useless information on the sign like the time and temperature rather than something really impact-full and probably blame the people driving by at 50 mph for not slowing down to read all of their messages.