Think Before You Leap!

A new missionary recruit went to Venezuela for the first time. He was struggling with the language and didn’t understand a whole lot of what was going on. He went to visit a local church but having arrived late, the church was already packed. The only pew left was the one on the front row. He would be in front of everybody in the church. And so as not to make a fool of himself, he decided to pick someone out of the crowd to imitate. He chose to follow the man sitting next to him on the front pew. As they sang, the man clapped his hands, so the missionary recruit clapped too. When the man stood up to pray, the missionary recruit stood up too. When the man sat down, he sat down. During the preaching, the recruit didn’t understand a thing. He just sat there and tried to look just like that man in the front pew. The man nodded his head and he did too.Then he perceived that the preacher was giving announcements. People clapped, so he looked to see if the man was clapping. He was, and so the recruit clapped too. Then the preacher said some words that he didn’t understand and he saw the man next to him stand up. So he stood up too. Suddenly a hush fell over the entire congregation. A few people gasped. He looked around and saw that nobody else was standing. So he sat down. After the service ended, the preacher stood at the door shaking the hands of those who were leaving.

When the missionary recruit stretched out his hand to greet the preacher, the preacher said, in English: "I take it you don’t speak Spanish." The missionary recruit replied: "No I don’t. It’s that obvious?" "Well yes," said the preacher, "I announced that the Rodriguez family had a newborn baby boy and would the proud father please stand up.”

To be truthful, the church is sadly filled with many people like that missionary who are faking it. Just going through the motions. And the world can tell we aren’t genuine and they can tell by our actions that we don’t really know Jesus. They aren’t fooled. The old saying applies, "You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time."