“The church exists for nothing else but to draw men unto Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.” – C.S. Lewis
Little Christs. This is what the Church is supposed to be producing. Persons who emulate Christ. People who ask “What would Jesus do?” and then actually go out and do it. The question is: Is this what churches are doing?
Christian author, Bill Hull, writes that “People cannot be formed in Christ in a culture that is dominated by a consumer mentality.” Churches who are mostly concerned with multiplying ministries to meet people’s needs, adopting a culturally driven marketing model of attracting people with various “Christian” goods and services, primarily seeing themselves in competition with other churches, find it very difficult, indeed, to produce little Christs. The Church is called to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Our competition is not other churches, but Satan.
In the world, your principal identity is consumer. You are trained, encouraged, and educated to take up your place in the professional world so that you can be a good consumer. This is who you are. The Church offers a completely different identity, your true identity: child of God. Person, created in the image of God, of infinite value and eternal worth. You are not your net worth. You are not your retirement savings. You are not your purchasing power. You are more, higher, and greater.
The unbelievable lie so many believe, is that consumption leads to happiness. Then why is there always a need to consume more? Why don’t the things we consume satisfy? We get the new deal home and the next thing we know, we just have to have the next new thing.
Only in Christ can people discover their own true value, only in Christ can we know our own amazing selves and experience lasting meaning and fulfillment. I hope more churches jump off the consumer bandwagon and onto the disciple-making path, and see more and more little Christs make an eternal difference in our dying world.
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