Church Bulletins?

I am reading a book right now by the President of World Vision, Richard Stearns called The Hole In Our Gospel. It's a very interesting book about how most Americans who profess to be Christians still miss the sacrificial living and giving aspect of their faith. He emphasizes the fact that there is a hurting world around us and for some reason we tend to ignore it and focus on our own problems.

I copied an excerpt of the book and put it below. Before you read it know that I'm not calling out any churches in particular I just thought it was a very interesting point.

If church leaders do not have an outward vision to become salt and light in our world, to promote social and spiritual transformation, pursue justice, and proclaim the whole gospel, then the church will fail to realize its potential as an agent for change. It will become inwardly focused on meeting the needs of its members, to the exclusion of its nonmembers. It will be a spiritual cocoon, where Christians can retreat from a hostile world, rather than a “transformation station” whose primary objective is to change the world.

We need only to read our church bulletin to see where our priorities have been placed. How many of the announcements involve programs that focus more on meeting our needs than the needs of those outside the church? I’ve been in churches whose bulletins read like the table of contents for Psychology Today, listing programs and support groups for depression, anxiety, divorce recovery, bipolar disorder, sexual dysfunction, eating disorders, and dieting, not to mention aerobics, Pilates, cooking classes, and Tae Kwon Do. It’s not that churches shouldn’t minister to their own members, but there should be a balance between internal and external ministry. When our churches become spiritual spas in which we retreat from the world, our salt loses its saltiness and we are no longer able to impact the culture.

Morgan Chilulu, an African pastor of a small and humble church in the midst of the Aids pandemic, once told me, “A church that lives within its four walls is no church at all”