Chapter 15, of the Book of Luke, tells us parables of three ‘lost’ things; a sheep, a coin, and a son. It’s part of God’s message to us that we have never looked upon another human being who isn’t valuable to God. But that probably doesn’t fit the ‘oncers.’
In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, ‘oncers’ are people who go to church once (or maybe twice) a year; usually at Easter or Christmas. According to Bill Hybels & Mark Mittelberg, in ‘Becoming a Contagious Christian’, we run the risk of considering these folks; and others; as not having any value to God. And because of that, we don’t reach out to them to see where they stand with the gospel message.
After making lists of who is and who isn’t important to God, they say (and I agree), that when “we’ve bought into this line of reasoning, we’ve imperceptibly but effectively removed any hope of getting motivated to spread God’s message of grace.” They conclude that “if these people don’t matter that much to God, why should we get all worked up about trying to reach them?”
If you can see the danger in this, then I encourage you to review the people in your life and see if you’ve placed any of them, for any reason, on God’s, ‘I’m not interested in them’ list. Getting them off the list could be the first step God might use in moving you toward reaching out to them with His very Good News!
Did you find yourself having a list that identifies certain behaviors as ‘proof’ that God wouldn’t be interested in those people? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment or email me directly, and here’s why…your admission might be just the thing God uses to move someone else toward looking closer at the lists they’ve created.
What’s Next?
Want some more encouragement? You can read another one from ‘Becoming a Contagious Christian’ or scan the entire section of 60 ‘Encouragement Efforts’ articles. And, as ‘Comments on Quotes’ will be the topic of my next post and you can check out some previous ones here.
