"You're Interested in Religion, I'm Interested in People"

Scripture:

Zechariah 7:1 On the fourth day of the ninth month, in the fourth year of the reign of King Darius, God's Message again came to Zechariah. 2-3The town of Bethel had sent a delegation headed by Sarezer and Regem-Melech to pray for God's blessing and to confer with the priests of the Temple of God-of-the-Angel-Armies, and also with the prophets. They posed this question: "Should we plan for a day of mourning and abstinence next August, the seventieth anniversary of Jerusalem's fall, as we have been doing all these years?" 4-6God-of-the-Angel-Armies gave me this Message for them, for all the people and for the priests: "When you held days of fasting every fifth and seventh month all these seventy years, were you doing it for me? And when you held feasts, was that for me? Hardly. You're interested in religion, I'm interested in people.

Observation:

All through out Scripture, God makes religion personal. It's about relationship and here God is reinforcing that theme.

Application:

From the beginning of the Bible, God has desired a relationship with humanity. Yet, through our brokenness, we have worked to destroy that relationship. As a new church plant, I have had people tell me that we were not doing church right. I beleive they mean that we are not religious enough and if that is the case, I say "praise God". At my current church, our contemporary service has been referred to as "Christianity Lite". Is it different? YES! Does it have a different focus...Possibly. Our focus is to facilitate a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I have found that for many of the generations, we have to meet them where they are in life. Kinda like Jesus did. Jesus met people by the sea where they worked and offered to make them fishers of men. He hung out by the wells where people would come to gather their water and he offered them living water.
I heard a story of a church who started a Bible study at Hooters! Why did they do that...because that's where a great many men were gathering and they thought it would be a great place to share Jesus. I spend a great deal of my office time in Starbucks and other local coffeehouses. Why do I do this...because I have found very few people who don't go to the church where I pastor walking down the halls in the middle of the day. However, it's amazing how many people who don't go to church that I meet at the coffeehouse. I as in a local coffee house the other day when 5 ladies walked in with their Bibles and guess what? They began having a Bible study right there in the middle of the coffee house. I thought to myself what a witness that was! Then I asked myself, why aren't there more Bible studies being done in coffeehouses? They are after all the "wells" of he 21st century. What a way to reach people where they are. Where did we as a Church decide on he motto "if you build it they will come"? Somewhere along the line we have gotten the false notion that people who need Christ need to come to us instead of us going to them. I believe we will have to answer that question one day.