Missing in Action: Where Is the Church?

By Mark Davidson

Mark Davidson grew up in South Africa. After completing 2 years of military service as an infantry soldier, he studied and completed a BA Ed degree in Human Movement Sciences at the University of the Free State. His teaching career began in1994 and he has taught in schools in South Africa, Malawi, Taiwan and Australia.
While working in the airline industry, he completed a Master of Philosophy degree in Applied Theology at the University of Pretoria.

Mark married the love of his life, Bev, in 2000 and they have been blessed with 2 beautiful sons, John and James.

He is the pastor of Bridge of Life Christian Fellowship in Tasmania, Australia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Apr 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499001310

Mark Davidson

Mark Davidson (a pen name) is the author of Daniel Revisited and a life-long student of the Bible, eschatology, world history, and geopolitics. He has connected the dots yielding a new interpretation of Daniel which is being proven by current events. Mark is a graduate-degreed Aerospace Engineer having worked over thirty years in the defense and space industries. He and his wife live near Denver, CO.  

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Mark Davidson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 04/17/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

620662

CONTENTS

Foreword

CHAPTER 1   I am better than you!

CHAPTER 2   Who is the boss?

CHAPTER 3   We are building our kingdom!

CHAPTER 4   Things to do to get to heaven

CHAPTER 5   Secret Agents

CHAPTER 6   Is the prognosis terminal?

FOREWORD

Why is it that so many towns and cities have so many churches with so few people attending? There are many reasons for people not wanting to go to church and, to be honest, I don’t blame them. People who have never set foot into a church don’t want to start now. People who have been disillusioned by church (and boy are there lots of them) aren’t very keen to go back. Why should they?

My prayer is that once you have read this book, whether you have never been to church before or, whether you have a lot of unanswered questions about church, you will be encouraged to know that you are not to blame for the way you feel.

And if you regularly attend church or pastor a church, my prayer is that you will allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you as to what He wants to do in order for His church to be more effective and outward focussed in a broken world that is so in need of a Saviour.

Mahatma Gandhi summed it up so well when he said, I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. These were telling words spoken by an amazing man. Gandhi just couldn’t associate with Christianity because Christians didn’t follow the example of Jesus. Imagine if he saw Christians in a different light. Today, India has around 1.1 billion Hindus. Who knows what an affect a different attitude of Gandhi towards Christianity might have had on a sixth of the world’s population.

How the world would change if the church stepped up to the plate and became the hands and feet of Christ. But for that to happen, the church first needs to become the heart of Christ.

CHAPTER 1

I am better than you!

There are societies in the world where people are fighting to survive. Some countries in Asia, Africa and South America have populations who fight to stay alive every single day.

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, physiological needs have to be met first. You don’t really think of anything else until needs like hunger, thirst and breathing have been met. Having lived in Africa for 45 years I have seen first-hand what this looks like. Children younger than 5 standing at the robots (traffic lights) in the middle of winter, at night, barefoot and scantily dressed, begging for change, warm clothes or something to eat.

A few of us decided to make soup once a week and to reach out to these kids. Getting to know them we realised the severity of the problem. Most of them didn’t know where their parents were, they slept in cardboard boxes and they never knew where their next meal would come from.

They would often take the little bit of money that they would get from begging and use it to buy some glue to sniff. Our first reaction as people who don’t need to struggle to survive would be to question why they do this. What sort of life is this?

If you were in that situation, wouldn’t you want to do something that would make you forget about the fact that you have nothing to really look forward to? The cheapest way of doing this is getting high on glue. Yet it’s so easy for us to judge. We are so often not in the predicament that others are in, yet we always seem to know how to solve their problems. We want to tell them about Jesus and how they need Him in their lives, but all they are interested in is to eat and keep warm.

How about changing our approach by meeting people where they are at, showing that we care, and building a relationship with them. That’s what Jesus did!

It’s so easy for us to judge

A devastating thing that happened so often at the robot incidents was that driver after driver would pretend to be retuning the radio or finding something in the cubby hole, when these kids would be begging for a few cents at their car window. I know! I used to be one of those drivers. There were always enough excuses to justify my actions:

•   I don’t really have change

•   They’re just going to buy glue or alcohol

•   I don’t have time now

•   I am also struggling financially

That made me feel better and I could drive away without a problem. Until the Holy Spirit showed me that none of