August 25, 2006
Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow...
Churches today continue to search for programs, methods and trends that will open the floodgates of church growth. I’m sure our leader’s intentions are good, but I can’t help but wonder if they’ve overlooked Paul’s comments to the Corinthians, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” (1 Cor 3:6 NIV) It appears to me that churches spending energy on planting and watering don’t have to worry about growing. I’m not trying to sound pessimistic, but in my church if God did open the floodgates of growth, someone would probably decide it needed to be controlled and managed.
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Gail;
----I Cor 3 has always been one of my favorite chapters in the Bible.
I believe a good case can be made that Paul is not necessarily talking about growth in numbers here (nor in Ephesians 4 and Colossians 2) as much as he is growth in spirituallity. I don't believe that the Lord is hung up on numbers. I think our contemporary leaders are.
----It was Jesus who told us that the way was broad and many were those who went on it to destruction, but the way to life was narrow, and few traveled it. Yet the contemporary leader thinks something is wrong with the church if the world does not flock to it in mass. Jesus internalized the law, as is most clearly seen in the Sermon on the Mount, so that lust becomes adultery, and calling your brother a fool becomes murder. Jesus was concerned about the condition of the heart, the integrity and sincerety of the motive, moreso than its action and physical effects.
----So how is it that our church leaders have come to be so hung up on raking in the sheeps? They will tell you that they have not lost consideration for the substance of the heart. They will point to all of the available small groups where the rich feed is served as their evidence of this. And they are right. There is rich feed in the small groups and lush spiritual growth there, but only a few sheep.
----Most sheep coming into the Sunday morning pasture, for one reason or another, do not choose to move into the stables, that is, the small groups. The very principle behind the contemporary church format reveals this fact. What was the Sunday morning pasture, in all the richness of its feed once made available there, has been turned into a "spiritual" business-loop of the world's interstate highway. What is important in the auditorium now is the traffic - the numbers - but not the provision for healthy spiritual growth.
----So in order for the church leaders to enjoy the benefit of the world's willingness to off-ramp a business-loop through the Sunday morning service, they must bleach out the food there to make it more pallitable for the more unyielding who travel the world's highways. Some churches have even pandered to the traffic so much that the precious, placid numbers have trampled what pasture remained into hard-pack dirt and dust.
----Now tell me where those genuine Christians who have neither the will nor the time to search out the stables are going to find a bit of nourishment to bite into amongst the dust and trampling feet. Then tell me how placing a further demand upon that soul to get the feed he came for simply because it is, after all, a church is not being more concerned for growth of numbers than for growth in hearts.
----Paul wrote that when he and Apollos did such-and-such, God gave the growth. Note that the such-and-such he referred to was not the construction of an off-ramp from the world's filthy interstate highway through the worship room of the sheep of God. Rather it was planting and watering. No one plants and waters in the middle of a roadway, nor do they run a roadway through the place they plant and water, except of course the for contemporary leader! Genius!
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