One of my goals for this blog is to begin to answer the question, “what does a great church look like”? And not just that but how do we create a great church. I want to explore and introduce you to a process that I’ve been apart of that can help you to do just that. And by doing that I hope to give you clarity on the three steps to making your church successful. So let me introduce you to this series…
Episode 00: One Key Reason Why Church Consultations Fail
I don’t want to scare you away from reading my blog. But I want to set you up with some solid knowledge before we jump into the meat and potatoes. Let’s begin with a well known verse in Proverbs.
My son, if you will receive my words, and hide my commandments with you; So shall you understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. [Proverbs 2:1-2 ]
I could stop writing right here and say it all, but we’re just getting started. In this verse we see that a disciple of Christ is someone who will, “Receive His words,” and “hide his commandments with you,”.
This is the life of a disciple. It’s about giving our hearts over to the lord. Not only that but about living like it. I may have said this before, but my passion for this subject comes from my past, the way I was raised. I was raised in a traditional and religious family. And not knowing any different I walked in the footsteps of generations before me.
After becoming a Christian I began to learn what it meant to be a Christ follower. One of the things I learned was that religion is not the same as a relationship. A religion is a man made construct for good or evil depending on how you view it. And it only exists because of people wanting to control others. (I am not talking about a denomination mind you, although there are people that use the power of leadership to control people.)
A relationship is something that we engage with that enriches our life, that brings us joy and peace. A relationship is an intimate bond that is beyond a simple business agreement.
And that’s how God wants us to see him. He wants us to see him as our father, our friend, our Savior, our redeemer, our Shepherd, our counselor, and our vindicator. We come to him and lay out our entire life so he can examine it, and then He stands with us, and on us, and He says, ‘you are mine, and I will always be yours.’ He has always been there for us. Always been there to guide us, to protect us, to take care of us, and to do His will.
It’s a relationship and relationship requires us to do things.
There are many lessons to learn from the life of Adam. One of which is the lesson that we must ‘receive His word, and hide his commandments.’ We must open ourselves to allowing ourselves to live out the teachings of God. And we have a lot of options when it comes to doing that.
One of the things we can do as a Church is hire a consultant who can point out to us, and show us where our church and ourselves are failing God. And I’m not saying that all consultants are bad. There are some that do a good job, and actually want to see change. I’ve seen it first hand. But there are those that want to help at the same time they want to cut the balls off all the players on the playing field, and make it so they can only play in the end zone. These are the ones that like to draw the long line in the sand, and force the other team to step over. But not before they are robed of everything they thought they had.
Be Lazy
I want to challenge you to do this one thing for this week: Be Lazy! Take a week and learn more about who Jesus is, and how much he loves us. I’ve read John about 5 times now and let me tell you, it’s changed my life. Just a little book, but it’s jam-packed full of love.
So let that be your challenge, and let’s meet up again next week and get into the next episode of this series:
Series: The Church Reformation
Posted in The Church Reformation