{"id":665,"date":"2008-10-08T10:05:21","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T17:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=665"},"modified":"2008-10-08T10:05:21","modified_gmt":"2008-10-08T17:05:21","slug":"reaching-the-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2008\/10\/08\/reaching-the-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaching The Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve lost count of how many missions events I’ve attended where the theme was “reaching the lost.”\u00a0 I’ve always had a visceral aversion to this term, “the lost.”\u00a0 It’s an aversion that’s bothered me at times — am I just afraid of the exclusiveness of the claims of Christ?\u00a0 Perhaps, but I recently noticed this post on church growth seminars<\/a> that resonated with me on this and other related topics.<\/p>\n

I think at least some of my negative reaction to the term “reaching the lost” is ethically and theologically right.\u00a0 Ethically, “the lost” is a way of objectifying people.\u00a0 It moves us out of the responsibility to develop authentic two-way relationships with real individuals, in which we might learners and receivers as much as teachers and givers.\u00a0 It sets us up as “better,” more enlightened, more knowledgeable than those who we’re trying to “reach.”\u00a0 It devalues the personal story of the “other” and insists that “our” stories take priority.<\/p>\n

Theologically, “the lost” ignores God’s sovereignty.\u00a0 Ultimately God, and only God, knows who has received and who will receive the grace that is available in Christ.\u00a0 Moreover, we do not “reach” people.\u00a0 Rather, the Holy Spirit changes people, and God sometimes uses us in that process.\u00a0 Finally, often this idea of “reaching the lost” is coupled with a sense of desperate urgency.\u00a0 There is an urgency in that the “fields are white unto harvest” and we are called to go into those fields.\u00a0 But there is no urgency in the sense of whether God’s plan of redemption will be accomplished.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, I’d rather set aside talk of “reaching the lost.”\u00a0 Let’s instead talk of “announcing good news.”\u00a0 God’s reign, His peace, has come in Christ, and we invite all to participate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve lost count of how many missions events I’ve attended where the theme was “reaching the lost.”\u00a0 I’ve always had a visceral aversion to this term, “the lost.”\u00a0 It’s an aversion that’s bothered me at times — am I just afraid of the exclusiveness of the claims of Christ?\u00a0 Perhaps, but I recently noticed this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-aJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}