Jesus Vs. Video Games

My primary ministry is to help coordinate church planting across the state of Connecticut. In that role I get to spend time with a lot of fine young couples who have a passion for changing their world. One of the things I work with those couples to do when they first get started is to find some partners who would stand with them in prayer, giving and volunteerism. Those partners come from other area churches and from churches outside our area that have a burden for Connecticut. It is a lot of work to find partners willing to sacrifice their time, their treasure and their talents to help a church they are not even part of. But the Lord touches the hearts of partners and they join the cause.

Recently one of our church planters sent a Facebook message to me. He had been working the social media angle pretty hard trying to find partners. Though some people had responded, many had not. In a pointed moment of realization it occurred to him that many of the same people he was contacting about partnering with him in church planting were ignoring his messages about partnering but sending him countless messages inviting him to play games on Facebook. He found it ironic that they would talk to him a lot about games but none about Jesus. His message pondered what it would be like if he could get people as excited about partnering with him as they were about playing games on Facebook. I wonder the same thing.

And it is not just Facebook games. People who tell me they do not have time to volunteer have the time to play on both a softball league and a basketball league. People who tell me they do not have money to donate somehow have the money to drive the latest model car with all the upgrades. Pastors who tell me their church is too stretched to help plant another church find money for another round of renovations in a sanctuary that already looks pristine and take their senior adults on amazing sight seeing trips on fully equipped buses, but seem unable to take those same people on a mission trip. Once I got a letter from a mega-church asking me for money, not to start a church, but to build an $120,000 playground for the children in their already well funded private school. I sent them a letter back suggesting they tithe off their playground fund to a church plant in New England. I am still waiting on that donation to come through . . .

It is all about priorities. The American church has gotten our priorities wrong. Now we play games and have fun instead of being about the business of winning others to Jesus. I am not suggesting that we should NEVER have fun or play a game, but somewhere along the line we must stop playing games with our faith and start doing whatever it takes to win our nation to Jesus. The team of church planters we have in Connecticut are in it to win it, will you join them, or are you too busy playing games on Facebook, planning your next trip to the beach or getting a message at the spa?

For more devotionals like this one, consider Touching the Footprints of Jesus.