The global Church needs to look more like the early church if it wants to fulfil the Great Commission by 2033, says Rick Warren.
With just eight years to go until the 2,000th anniversary of the Church, he said there were a number of things Christians must do if the ambitious goal is to be met. These include modelling the early Church in love and prayer.
“Most of our churches are just known for a lot of talk,” he said.
Speaking at the World Evangelical Alliance’s general assembly on Wednesday night, he said that what people in the world really need is love and that while a lot of churches may think of themselves as loving, he said that in his experience, what this really meant was “we love the people who are already here”.
“Love is the magnet that attracted people to Christ,” he said, sharing his motto that “growing churches love and loving churches grow”.
“If any church genuinely loves people, you will have to lock the door to keep people out because the world is hungry for love.
“They’re not hungry for some of the other things we’re offering."
He added, "I’ve never met a human being in the world who’s not hungry for love.”
He cautioned pastors especially that if they want to build a loving church, then they themselves must be loving.
“I’ve met a lot of pastors, particularly in large churches, they love crowds and hate people,” he said.
Similarly, seminary students have come up to him and told him how much they love to preach, but this, he suggested, was the wrong focus.
“They think that’s going to impress me. It doesn’t impress me. You may just like attention. You like everybody looking at you. You like being focused on. You like the rush of adrenaline. Honestly I don’t care if you love to preach. I want to know: do you love the people you preach to?”
If the Great Commission is going to be fulfilled, Warren said that the Church needed to equip every believer to share the Gospel.
“We must train every believer to preach the Good News everywhere,” he said.
“You’re probably never going to stand behind a pulpit but God has called every Christian to communicate the Good News so we have to train every believer how to do this.”
Fulfilling the Great Commission is not only about evangelism. Warren said there was also a need to train those who are already in the Church “to be doers of the Word, not just hearers”.
He said: “It’s not enough to know the word. The problem in Christianity today? We Christians know far more than we are doing. But we don’t get blessed for knowing the Word of God. We get blessed for doing the Word of God.”
Churches around the world are getting ready to celebrate the 2,000th anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus and the birth of the Church in 2033.
Warren challenged evangelicals to think beyond people in their own neighbourhoods, and seek to reach people from every tribe and tongue, including in other countries, saying his church - Saddleback in California - was the only one in Christian history to plant a church in 197 countries.
He went on to say that the Great Commission will not be fulfilled so long as there are people in the world who still do not have the Bible in their own language.
“Millions of people still don't have a Bible in their language. Are our churches doing anything about that?" he said.
“There’s still a couple of thousand languages in the world that don't have any Bible.
“If we’re going to complete the Great Commission, we have to have God's Word in everybody’s language.
“No one should have to learn a new language in order to hear ‘Jesus loves you’.”
It was the second time that Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, preached at the general assembly of the World Evangelical Alliance. In his first address earlier in the week, he said that the Great Commission could only be fulfilled if the Church has an effective plan in place.
“If we learn not just the message but the method of Jesus, we will win the world in the next eight years," he said.
