Gospel Frenzy

The real push again this year is for you and I to join the frenzy!   The frenzy seems to begin earlier every year.   The main event was last week with a long list of retailers and brands offering discounts across technology, fashion, homewares, beauty and more.  There were 4,000 deals from more than 800 Australian and international brands.   This homegrown retail event is one of the biggest sales events of the year - Click Frenzy!   So many other retailers have jumped on board with their own online frenzy sales. 

It is all a bit madness, isn't it?   This is really what frenzy means:  a temporary madness.   Frenzy refers to being agitated, distracted, in state of hysteria.   In our western world, especially during the weeks leading to Christmas, there is buying madness.   Everything is in a frenzy!   It is no wonder our consumer world has bought into this idea of frenzy.   Something mad is not seen as bad!  People are encourgaged to join the frenzy!  The real madness of this time of the year is how the celebration of Christ's birth has been reduced to a buying frenzy.

When Jesus was on earth some thought that he was 'raving mad' (John 10:20).   Jesus' followers, like the apostle Paul, were viewed as people 'out of their mind', 'insane' (Acts 26:24)   In fact, Paul tells us that the Christian message will sound like foolishness to unbelievers (see 1 Corinthians 1:18ff)   Believers are "fools for Christ." (1 Corinthians 4:1) even as one of the desert fathers, Anthony the Great (b. 254 AD), said of followers of Jesus.   People will say: "You are mad, you are not like us." 

All of this frenzy talk made me think about the missional vision we have adopted as churches:  to be a church reforming to reach the lost for Christ.  For most Australians this sounds like foolishness.   Have we as Christians gone mad?   How can we talk about people being lost?   Most people we meet do not consider themselves as lost.  They know who they are and where they are going in life.   They don't need a bunch of church-goers to tell them about life's direction.   Just try it someday.   Go up to somebody and ask them, "Are you lost?"  That is not how people see themselves.   Yet this is exactly how the Bible prompts us to think of unbelievers.   In Jesus' triology of stories in Luke 15 he talks about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.   The point of these stories is how God and all of heaven rejoices when the lost are found.   In fact, Jesus summed up his whole life and ministry as coming "to seek and to save what was lost." (Luke 19:10)  This is really the foolishness of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:18).   We talk about Jesus' death on the cross as the pathway to life for every man, woman, boy, and girl.   This is the good news (= gospel) of the Bible!  When people put their faith in Christ, trusting that his death paid the penalty of their sins, they have life eternal.   The lost are then found.   Sinners are saved! 

There are over 25 million people living in Australia.   In the past two generations we have seen regular church attendance drop from 47% of the population to 15%.   Now this is still a significant proportion of the Australian population.   As McCrindle research pointed out some years ago, there are still twice as many Australians attending church at least once per month as attend all AFL, NRL, A League, and Super Rugby games combined during the football season.   Today, just weeks after the AFL and NRL grand finals, and right in the middle of the State of Origin series, we all know about the football frenzy in Australia.   But what gospel frenzy?   I like to suggest that if we are ever going to reach the more than 21 million unchurched people in Australia we need to have some gospel frenzy.   We need some madness among us!

Here is what I am suggesting.   We need to become vocal as Christians sharing the message of Christ with our neighbours, our co-workers, our unchurched family members.   If we do not know any unbelievers, then like Jesus we need to become a friend of sinners (Matthew 9:11).  Jesus often hung out with sinners and ate meals with them.   We are to "go and do likewise" to our neighbours. (Luke 10:37)  We are to seek the lost so that we can tell them how to get saved.  As we share the gospel with sinners, pointing out their lostness, they might think we have gone mad.   It might sound like foolishness to them.   But "the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." (1 Corinthians 1:25)   This foolishness of God is not just something we need to talk about;  we need to show it through lives that are different.   People need to see "your good deeds". (1 Peter 2:12; see also Matthew 5:16)   People need to look at us and say, "You are mad, you are not like us."  As you live as a 'fool for Christ' people will see and hear the good news of Jesus.   The lost will be found.  The dying will live - both now and into eternity.

What the world needs today is a whole lot of gospel frenzy!