Just who or what is on the front line?

Sometimes I find that if I get a fresh way of looking at something it totally helps me to be able to make the connections that get results. For instance I have been wrestling with the ineffectiveness of our American churches at impacting lives and on a broad scale bringing the life of Christ to a disconnected world.
Then a thought hit me. All my "ministerial" life I have functioned from the position that the church is THE front line of connecting Christ to the world. What I have realized is that the church is not the front line. The front line is each disciple of Jesus, or every believer. The church has the role of supporting, training, inspiring, healing, motivating, equipping, encouraging, the disciple as the disciples evangelizes, disciple's, etc.
The difference is more than a semantic exercise. I often hear people say "My church does evangelism", "My church does discipleship" etc. That individual most often does not engage in evangelizing, disciplemaking because "my church does it."
You can see how this plays out to the negative when we feel we have accomplished our task when our worship attendance goes up, our budgets are met and all the committees have warm bodies. When "the church" orgainization "is "working well", we have reached our goal.
My fresh prayer is that church leaders will begin to see the New Testament role of the church as the support system for the believer. In particular my prayer is for you to rethink your own purpose as a disciple of Jesus,

More lessons from Swaziland

A little hand surgery has kept me from being able to follow up on some of the lessons I learned from a spring visit to Swaziland, left handed two fingered typing is really slow.
But actually that cues me in for what I had wanted to share and it is about the lesson I learned of how nothing is ever to torn up or broken to be used.
I admit that I have gotten pretty caught up in our disposable American society. I often find myself thinking that something can be replaced easier than it can be repaired. When we were setting up in Swaziland we were attempting to connect two large tents to each other. The second tent had been badly damaged in a recent storm episode. Frankly, it was torn in such key places of support that there was no way it would stand the winds of the African hillside. But our Swazi brothers paid no attention to such details and set about figuring out ways to make it work and sure enough in about an hour, it was not only upright, but remained so for a week.
The second day that we were there a soccer ball met up with a thorn bush and the thorn bush won. The ball slowly leaked to a softness that made it difficult to play with. One of the Swazi children took the ball to one of our team members, handed it to them and said,"fix it." I watched the contrast of the team member who had no way to fix it and the genuine expectation of the child that it would be fixed.
That is when it hit me the clearest of the contrast of cultures. Everything in Swaziland can be fixed or used somehow, very little in our American culture can be repaired, it is just easier to throw it away. But then I realized that mindset easily transforms from "things" to "people".
In Swaziland no one is too poor, too sick, too much trouble, I observe very often in our churches the disposal of (not with intentionality but with real practice) people. Too often I see some who are too needy, too demanding, too unable to conform to the community codes and you just notice that they are off the scene.
Somehow we need to hear again someone remind us that we are following one who could not allow a "bruised reed to be broken or a smoking flax to be quenched."