Saturday, January 21, 2017

State of the Church

Who Are We?

Well, it's a new year and something that people often do at this time of year is to take stock of things. It occurred to me (by the Spirit?) that it would be good for me to do that in terms of our church. So, this is the first of several short inserts reflecting on our church. This insert looks at the question, 'Who are we?'

Here's one thing that is obvious about us. We are a small church. Is that a problem? Is that something that we should be embarrassed about? The fact of the matter is that, for the longest time, I was embarrassed by our size. 'Successful pastors lead (numerically) growing churches', or so I was led to believe. But really, should we see our small size as a problem? It is a problem if the goal is to get bigger. But is that Jesus' goal for His churches? I really don't think so. Size is never mentioned as a measure of success in the Bible.

We're not big, but we are the communion of the saints. The Gospel is being taught and increasingly believed here. We are working at being faithful disciples and good friends. All of those things are good. There actually is much about us that is good. To be sure, there still is much to work on, but that shouldn't stop us from feeling good about who we are.

Next insert: 'But we don't do anything?' 

This is from a series of bulletin inserts that I wrote for my church.

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