Love, not hatred or indifference, key to winning lost to Christ, Estep says

HOUSTON—Mark Estep, senior pastor of Spring Baptist Church of Spring, Texas, delivered the convention sermon during the 2015 annual meeting of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, Tuesday, Nov. 10. Preaching from Luke 7, Estep discussed the unifying power of love, urging attendees to see people the way Jesus sees them and to love them the way he loves them.

Estep cited a recent study that found 37 percent of non-church goers say they do not attend because the “people there don’t really care.” Estep challenged the 772 messengers who had registered for the meeting at that point and 700 guests to change the way they interact with people so that Christians may indeed be known by their love and so that through that love, many will come to know the saving love of Jesus Christ.

“It is guesstimated that there are 183 million lost people in the United States of America, and I guess the follow up question would be this: Who cares?” Estep said. “Jesus does. he cares, but do we care? Does it matter to us? We get stuck inside the walls of the church, and we fail to really see. We fail to really engage.”

True love, Estep said, sees people and responds to suffering.

“Let us show the truth by our actions,” Estep said. “We’ve gotta quit just giving lip service, folks.”

Ignorance and indifference, he said, do not put love into action. Rather, they keep church members in their pews and keep churches from growing and reaching people.

“It keeps us ordinary instead of extraordinary,” Estep said. “Doctors don’t care about their patients, teachers don’t care about their students, politicians don’t care about the country. But the saddest thing is, Christians don’t care about the lost.”

True love not only sees people and responds to suffering, he said. True love responds to needs. It doesn’t just form committees or talk about it.

“Jesus sets the example of involvement,” Estep said.

And that involvement, he continued, must look loving, not hateful. No one gets argued into becoming a Christian or name-called into being saved, he explained.

“People don’t respond to hatred, they respond to the love of Christ,” Estep said.