Compel Them

I asked what does it mean to you to compel people to come to Jesus. I have been thinking about that a great deal lately. We have seen incredible growth around here lately, to the point that I am wondering when we need to start the process for the next building phase because we are already maxed out in a variety of places. We are using over flow parking already. The children's Sunday school area is five times bigger than our old building and yet, we will soon be struggling with overflow of kids. We are ramping up for 1,000 in worship. These are all awesome things!

So if this kind of growth is happening why in the world would I be writing about compelling people to come to Jesus? Well, for me, it's not about how many people we have coming now, it is the people who are not in a relationship with Jesus that matter the most. Jesus said he came for the lost and the sick, not the healthy. Over sixty percent of this region is unchurched! That should set us on fire.

I believe God has positioned Charter Oak Church to be a place where people feel welcome and loved. I believe God is raising up a mother load of people who genuinely love Jesus and want to share that love with people who do not know him.

I believe that to compel people to come to Jesus we are going to have to build relationships with people in our circle of influence so that they can discover that we care about them and we love them. Then we can invite them to Charter Oak Church so they can learn why we love and care the way that we do. And when they get here, we must have a building full of people who are totally sold out to Jesus and his character.

Compel is an action verb. We can't just expect people to come to Jesus because we have a really cool building. We are going to have to get involved in people's lives, not to bring them to church, but to point the way to Jesus.