Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Who grows the Church?

The key point from yesterday's blog was that "growing the church" is Christ's work in and through us and we must constantly be looking to Him for direction and definition. That is what Paul had to remind the Corinthians in 3:1-15. They has lost perspective with Jesus and were going about church their own way; viewing it from their own fallen viewpoint and setting their own agenda.

Paul's conviction on church growth seems to rest on human inability. Possibly that is why he said "only God can grow a church" because growth (health)is more than numbers. Only God can impart new life, supernatural life.

If growth was simply just getting people through the doors of the meetinghouse and more coins in the collection plate each year we could grow a church. We could use marketing techniques, the best advertising and hire some "eye candy" entertaining motivational speaker to strum the emotional cords of people each week and we could grow a church much like a successful corporation is grown.

We do not want to "put the cart before the horse" so to speak, because Paul and Jesus both refer to growth as being spiritual in nature first. Focusing on numbers over "heart transformation" can be disastrous for a local fellowship. The power and health of the Church is in knowing Christ.

Knowing Him means obedience, following and honoring His ways. Knowing Him provides unity of purpose, oneness of heart and magnetism to the world. This is an inability of marketing technique, psychological motivation, and all the forms of human persuasion. It's a God thing. What's your thoughts? Thanks for stopping by!
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Adrian

3 comments:

  1. Amen and Amen to the first four paragraphs.

    The following however sounds like 'cart befor the horse' "Knowing Him means obedience, following and honoring His ways".

    How about after knowing Him, He will teach or grow us into "obedience, following and honoring His ways".

    Maybe I'm splitting hairs but in my heart this seems critical.

    see ya

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  2. Monkey,
    With such wisdom and opinion you should have your own blog. :-)

    Question: Should relationship development with Christ look that much different than our human relationships? In healthy human relationship "knowing" is only found through boundaries, margins, spoken preferences, trial and error, emoting, forgiveness ... two well defined people who honor, follow and obey = knowing. Right?

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  3. My Dear Dr,
    Yes to your question regarding two fully human people engaging each other. The critical variable here is that this is God restoring His image in us. I do not know what wounds or baggage I’m dealing with in you as I get to know you. (Sometimes I do not know the wounds and baggage within myself as I get to know me).

    But Jesus knows from what I need to be freed, and healed so I may have the freedom, healing and ‘life to the full’ He desires for me.

    Certainly my close allies who have shared my personal journey of freedom and healing have had deeper relationship with me as I share, but only when I choose to allow them in. If I project the solutions Christ gave to me onto you, and you plug these behaviors into your life, it very well may contribute to preventing you from hearing the very thing Jesus has for you.

    I think in our humanness we go to great lengths to protect our heart and at some fundamental level we do not trust God (Eden), so we busy ourselves in hopes of not getting in undesirable territory, but it is in those dark places that His light heals.

    Can we focus only on bringing people to that place with Jesus? Is that enough? Will that preach indefinitely?

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