Start Where People Are
Luke 19:1-10
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him ,”Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
The main purpose and goal of the church must be to spread the good news of Jesus to others. The
primary method that has been used in the past to promote the message
and salvation of Jesus has been to do what we can to get people to
attend a worship service at a church. In other words, we try to get those who have not come to Jesus to come to us.
That approach was reasonably effective when the church was considered to be a respected and relevant institution in the culture. That is no longer the case. Most people don’t even pay any attention to the church. 60-70% of the population of our country won’t even consider coming to our churches for worship or any other kind of event. This
week we are going to use the example of Jesus and Zacchaeus to help us
learn how to reach those people in our culture who will not respond to
the traditional church.
This week I am not going to list
specific verses of scripture for each day but will be referring to some
of the principles that are implicit in this story to help guide us
toward being able to share the good news of Jesus with others.
