There is a holy longing in the hearts of my wife and me to reach the lost and lead them to maturity in Christ. We are increasingly unsettled, not unhappy, in our local church. We are increasingly convinced that local church as it exists in America, and perhaps especially in the SE US where we live, is simply not going forward as an obedient people of Christ. Yet, we are also subject to our leadership and are making no sudden moves, no predetermined eventual moves. We are seeking God.We live in a small town and are members of a local Pentecostal church in a nearby larger town in a neighboring county. In our own town, there are churches on every corner but it is the most spiritually dark little hamlet I know. The folks out in the county, the truly rural folks, the rural poor at that, are being almost wholly ignored by the local churches, even the Pentecostal holiness churches. There is almost no real Spirit filled body, no last days true Gospel work among these folks. We are not able or moved in any way to start yet another local church. Local churches have become so ubiquitous, so many "new" ones launched but not going into the lives of the lost, that they are like Wal Marts and McDonalds opening. Just another place to get what you can pay for more conveniently. But, these poor rural people have souls and Jesus died for them. The Holy Spirit is as able to draw them to the Lord as He is able to do so to anyone else. They are as ready to hear the Gospel as anyone. They are not going to the local churches because the local churches don't want them. The local churches prove their inward focus by ignoring and snubbing these rural poor and rural lost and by programming themselves away from the broken and unsaved.What is to be done? That is what we ask you to help us pray. Lord, what shall we do? Time is short. Wrath is coming. Persecution is on the leading edge the times to come. We are woefully unprepared, but more woefully unconcerned for the eternity of our unsaved neighbors. Please pray with us.
_________________Tim
