Here's how it turns out. You go to church on Sunday, serve in a project or two during the week for outreach, and spend the rest of your free time having fun with your group of Christian friends. I am not saying anything of this is necessarily wrong, but there is a key element that is missing and a new sort of Christianity that has developed.
1. Serve projects do not build relationships with those we reach. Instead one ends up only serving those Christians who are pouring into the lives of the people that they are reaching out too. What i mean by this is that outreach becomes just another part of your life that church is on Sunday. When you get home from church, you forget about it, when you come back from a serve project, you forget about it. You might have fun, or touch someone's life, but will you see them again? For most people, most likely not. There are those who are dedicated to being there regularly and reach into the lives on a deeper level, but this is a very small amount. Those are people we should learn from.
2. We spend our weeks around the Christian friends we have. Our time is about having fun and building community. Great! Except...not when your whole week revolves around this. These relationships have also become skin-deep. You seek to have fun, but you forget that the Christian life is about making disciples and reaching those around you. This is because one element is missing.
That element is investing into the lives of others. We forget that life is about giving of ourselves, and instead we become selfish with our time.(Phil 2:3) We would rather have fun, go into serve projects with ulterior motives to impress a girl/guy that you like. You forget what it means to go to an event that your non-Christian friend invites you too because it isn't cool enough and you'd rather be around the friends from church because it is easy and effortless. Why invest into the life of your unsaved friend? Or do you even have unsaved friends that you spend time with? We also stop talking to someone that we have a problem with as we would rather not deal with it. So what happens is that we become too superficial with the friends we have. We spend our time in the moment and forget that that is exactly what Satan wants us to do. Heaven...as Paul explains it, is where our eyes should be focused on. (Phil. 3:18:21)
I makes me sad seeing so many Christians who forget why we are here on Earth. The narrow path is not about having fun, but taking up your Cross daily and asking yourself...how does God want to use me today?
