Note: This is part 2 in a series based on the account of David and Goliath. To understand this post, the reader will want to read part 1 before reading what follows below.

It’s time for young ministers – our Davids – to step into leadership, supported and encouraged by more experienced ministers. It’s time for lead pastors to fully engage their staff pastors, to bring them into leadership discussions, decision-making, and actions. It’s time for denominations to encourage young missionaries and church planters and their fresh approaches. It’s time for churches to listen to new ways of doing ministry. It’s time for churches to consider David as a candidate to be their next lead pastor.

It’s time to put David in the game.  

Here is why:

 1. The people of God face a serious situation. I Samuel 17.10-11

Goliath. Giant. Philistines. Armies. Overwhelming numbers. Underwhelming odds.

Anti-Christian culture. Giant and growing still. Pluralists & Relativists. Armies in Government, Education, and Media. Overwhelming numbers. Underwhelming odds.

There was a time when American culture encouraged the work of the Gospel. That day is passed. Today, this country whose currency proclaims, “In God We Trust,” openly seeks to destroy the work of the Gospel and shame those who follow Christ – the examples are many and increasing in             frequency. Those who oppose God are strong and growing stronger, fueled by Satan’s last days effort to avoid his own judgment: the kingdom of darkness is attacking the church with a vengeance.

The effects are not measured in our opinions on the subject; they are measured in people’s lives.

Brooklyn Tabernacle pastor, Jim Cymbala, cites four independent studies – four – that find only 7 to 8 percent of Americans are evangelical Christians. NOT the 70 or 80 percent figure we so often hear, but             just seven to eight percent of people in America, your city, your neighborhood know Christ. Without a change, over ninety percent of Americans will enter eternity without Christ. And without a second chance of redemption.

What we’re doing isn’t working.

Kelly Shattuck, at Leaders.com cites two independent studies that have found only between 17 and 20% of Americans attend a “Christian” church on a regular basis. Again, not the 40, 50 or 60 percent figure quoted by Gallup and others, but less than 1 in 5, AND the study does not stipulate that the self-identified “church” actually preach the Gospel.

What we’re doing isn’t working.

The people of God are hiding out within the four walls of our tents our ranks are thinning.  (See tomorrow’s blog for more on this)

It’s time to put David in the game.

This is not to say that David is the answer to our situation. Not at all. The Davids of our day are no more the answer to our situation than the son of Jesse was the answer to the Goliath situation.

The answer lies in God and God alone.

The answer lies in the God whose servant David said to the giant, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand…that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand.” 17.45-48

Note that King Saul did not speak these words. Saul’s generals did not have this faith. David’s brothers did not take this action. No one among the leaders of Israel was ready to take on the serious situation in the name of God. No one was prepared to shake the status quo and do more than simply hope things would somehow get better.

No one but David.

It’s time to put David in the game.