Conclusion
Missional Living Realized
A few years ago my family moved. When we first moved to Wake Forest in 1995, we built a house in a neighborhood populated mostly by seminary faculty. I do love my colleagues, but living in a Christian ghetto never quite fit us. So when we got a chance we moved into the country to live on seven acres, with a swimming pool and beautiful trees. While there we helped a neighbor become an active follower of Christ and plug into our church. But while we enjoyed the space, we missed the impact we could make. So we sold the place, moved back into Wake Forest, and bought a house in a subdivision. On our street where we now live there are about a dozen houses. Only one family on the street is originally from North Carolina. Our closest neighbors are from California (two families), Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. Most are from outside the south. Most are unchurched. We have a couple who live together, an interracial couple, and a variety of political and social views, not to mention religious ideas.
We have seen God at work here. We have seen a few come to Christ, and some are active in our church now. But the work is slow. These are very successful people, several of whom own their own businesses. Most got enough conventional Christianity, usually of the mainline Protestant variety, to make them think they could do better without it. It has been quite a laboratory to help me think through how America must be reached. My family lives as missionaries in the community. We have shared Christ intentionally with most if not all and have spoken to neighbors on many occasions on spiritual issues. I believe more than ever the secret to reaching America is helping believers to live missionally in their communities, workplaces, and schools. We must keep the gospel ever before us.
After a speech, an older man approached pro-life activist Penny Lea. Weeping, he told her the following story:
I lived in Germany during the Nazi holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. I attended church since I was a small boy. We had heard the stories of what was happening to the Jews, but like most people today in this country, we tried to distance ourselves from the reality of what was really taking place. What could anyone do to stop it?
A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we would hear the whistle from a distance and then the clacking of the wheels moving over the track. We became disturbed when one Sunday we noticed cries coming from the train as it passed by. We grimly realized that the train was carrying Jews. They were like cattle in those cars!
Week after week that train whistle would blow. We would dread to hear the sound of those old wheels because we knew that the Jews would begin to cry out to us as they passed our church. It was so terribly disturbing! We could do nothing to help these poor miserable people, yet their screams tormented us. We knew exactly at what time that whistle would blow, and we decided the only way to keep from being so disturbed by the cries was to start singing our hymns. By the time that train came rumbling past the churchyard, we were singing at the top of our voices. If some of the screams reached our ears, we’d just sing a little louder until we could hear them no more. Years have passed and no one talks about it much anymore, but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. I can still hear them crying out for help. God forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians, yet did nothing to intervene.
Now, so many years later, I see it happening all over again in America. God forgive you as Americans for you have blocked out the screams of millions of your own children. The holocaust is here. The response is the same as it was in my country—Silence!1
While Lea applied this tragic story to the abortion holocaust in America, it also speaks to the negligence of the church to seek to save lost souls from hell. May our generation not be so busy spending time in activities at the local church building that we miss the cries of the hurting. Tell someone about Jesus, won’t you?
NOTES
1. From the brochure, “Sing a Little Louder,” by Penny Lea.