Urban Reformation

Earlier this month our inner-city neighborhood association had a meeting of the city minds where people gather around the one cause, their neighborhoods, to make it a better place. It’s the Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association. They spend much of their time attempting to redeem a once thriving historic neighborhood from the youthful tom foolery and crime that has run-a-muck in the area. They have neighborhood watch, their own community police advocates, where the KCPD (east patrol) come down and let them know about the crime in the area and what they’re doing to fix the problems.

There is also a codes violation inspector that comes to offer his services, for abandoned housing, or trash in the neighborhood which rest in the yards of the local unconcerned citizens. There are sponsored events such as the upcoming ChalkWalk for youth who are troubled, or don’t have anyone pouring into their life. We have all of these groups and people interested in their own agendas getting together to promote them and although all of these things are well and fine in and of themselves, I even applaud so many giving such an effort, these efforts treat only the symptoms and suppress the truth of the real problem of sin, and forgetting our God.

The truth being that we have forgotten our homes, that we have forgotten our families, and we have forgotten most of all Jesus Christ.

Ichabod, Ichabod / The glory is departed is a line from Robert Browning’s poem Waring, seems to be the charge of many churches in the NorthEast KCMO, but not all of them. For the most part the Glory of God has departed from churches, from the families, and from the homes, especially in the city. It is in the city where the burbs are going and we do not realize it. We suppress and suppress as God reveals wrath from heaven.

Romans 1:18

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

We then wonder why there are so many spiritually orphaned children in the streets. With their Televisions, Gameboys & peers parenting them. No one pouring into their life, each person living his own dream to such a selfish extent that we have suppressed all truth, making ourselves a slave to debt, and addictions, on the street, and then wondering why oh why are there so many children, and most of all no one testifying to them about the reality of Jesus Christ. Not a false ‘Ichabod religiosity’ which has no power to change their life but the true Jesus the True savior.

The secular mind believes if only we can give them something to strive for, if only we can give them hope for the future, yet we attempt to do this with exterior means. We attempt to fill these children with programs and activities. So many of these things are form without substance. We have the imitation of the things of God, the imitation of love, the imitation of Christ, but without the reality of Christ.

So to answer the question, “What’s Missing in The Inner City?”

• Parents are missing.
• The Centrality of the Home is missing both inside the church and outside the church.

And inside the home, “What’s missing?” – The Gospel

What does that mean for Christians? It means we must seek the truth, go after it like you’re searching for silver. What else does it mean? It means that the intensity of our love for God should weigh heavy as we see all those around us in the city and outside of the city who are walking by us and at some point falling off into a Christless eternity.

We must be equipped to live it out in our own lives and then take it out to the world, so that all of these external elements attempting to do the things which only God can do in the heart, which is cause repentance and belief. Our responsibility is to be the means which carries that out into the dark and dying world with the truth & testimony of Jesus Christ.

We send our children to FCA – a 3 day a week school, but this is a home school conference. However for those that don’t homeschool this message is an important one and I urge you all to have a listen and think for yourselves what are we doing to place Christ first in our own families, and then what are we doing to show others what family is supposed to look like?

Recently I was given a cd with this message from Voddie Baucham. I want to encourage everyone if they can to listen to the below message and if you can not, take time to come to listen to Voddie Baucham a week from today.

May God encourage you to place Christ in the center of your home, and then to share Christ and your home with others.

This is a link when Voddie will be in Kansas City. http://www.midwesthomeschoolers.org/voddie_baucham.htm#Voddie

The Centrality of the Home by Voddie Baucham
http://www.gracefamilybaptist.net/

If that link doesn’t work you can right click and download it here. http://downloads1.revivalgodsway.com/15/SID15607.mp3
In February of 2006, a group of more than 1,000 pastors and church leaders gathered for the Southern Baptist of Texas State Evangelism Conference in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. During the second night of the conference Voddie Baucham, who had preached at the previous year’s conference, was called upon to stand in for Dr. Tim LaHaye who had become ill a few days earlier. No one was ready for what happened next.

In a message State Director of Evangelism, Don Cass called “Truly Prophetic,” Voddie Baucham set the auditorium ablaze. The challenge he issued cut straight to the heart of the crisis in contemporary Evangelicalism.

This message has since been heard around the world. Emails from Singapore, Australia, Southern Africa and Central Europe have flooded in along with those from the United States as God uses this message to shake the foundations of ministries, institutions and individuals alike.

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