Inside or out?

In a brief, incisive post, Keith Plummer considers churches that use marketing techniques to pull a crowd:

The director of administration of one church that has tried to attract new people by holding rock concerts said, "If you can't get them into your building in one way or another, they're not going to hear your message." That's quite an overstatement but it reflects the commonly held view that the church building is the locus of evangelism. Why does it seem that we're often more interested in getting non-Christians into our sanctuaries than we are with equipping Christians to get the message out?

Exactly. That's a critical part of congregational preaching -- to encourage and help equip the saints to do far more in going out and reaching the lost than one man (the preacher) could do alone.

Update: Jeff of Anti-Itch Meditation has also posted a reaction to K.P.'s post.

Update 2: Thanks to John Telfer Brown, perhaps blogdom's greatest encourager, for pointing out this post at Blogcorner Preacher.