The opinions are still coming in but if I’m any judge, this week’s Backyard Bible Camp was an overwhelming success -- and, I hope, a model for how we do outreach at Open Door. Even when we have our own facility, the goal should be to get out of it as often as possible and into the community. The Bible Camp did just that. Big kudos to everyone involved!
The fact is, many people outside the Church are intimidated by our facilities. They see them only from the outside. What’s going on inside is left largely to their imaginations, which are colored by popular culture and its generally negative, even hostile, attitude toward organized religion of any stripe. The only sure way to show them who we are and what we are about, our Father’s business, is to get outside the walls.
I’m not knocking facilities as such. They’re tools and if they are used to successfully advance the Kingdom, then great. But if we’re not careful, they can encourage over time a kind of mental retreat from the world outside. A circle-the-wagons mentality has become common across our brotherhood today. We raise our physical edifice, retreat behind its comforting walls and then wait for the world, if it’s interested, to come to us. The mindset often goes with -- and reinforces -- this fractious zeal for defending our turf and traditions that for some brothers has come to trump all other considerations, including the Great Commission.
Let’s work hard so that our Open Door serves not only as an invitation to the world, but as an ever-present reminder of our own charge to go forth boldly into it.
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