In my last ministry job, our pastor decided that he would start his tenure by preaching a series on the "Acts 2 Church". His basic theme was that if we did the things that the early church did, we would experience explosive growth. As a new pastor following in the footsteps of a pastor who was, arguably, the most respected pastor in town, he needed to do something to make his mark (at least that's what I think). I don't fault him for wanting to establish his credibility in town but I was confused at the way he did it.
I think his deepest desire was to grow in numbers just like what happened after Peter delivered his sermon (...thousands were added to their numbers daily. Acts 2:47). In theory, I think his intentions were good. My issue then (and even more apparent now) was that we created dozens of programs to make it happen. We tried to orchestrate the growth. As a friend pointed out at a discussion group last night, the same thing happened in the early church. As soon as the numbers exploded, church leaders immediately implemented various programs and service centers for people who joined the team.
The real action in Acts was that the church grew before all the programming was implemented. The church leaders didn't orchestrate what happened. They kept it so simple (gave away their things and ate meas together). The first word in Acts 2:2 is "Suddenly!" Not, "After the leaders created ministry opportunities and responsibilities, the church was born!" Why do we orchestrate things? In my religion of origin (a large Southern Baptist in the California Bible belt), we had a scheduled "revival" every year where the move of God was expected. Apparently, God received some sort of invitation to show up and cleared His calendar to do something special that week.
One of my pastoral mentors said it this way,
When we begin to plan moves of God I believe we are walking on dangerous ground. His plans and ways are so much higher than ours - Isaiah 55:8-9
Our church has grown from 13 to 1,200 in four years. Some people ask me what we "did" to make it happen. If I let my ego take over, I could produce a list of things that we "did" along the way but, in reality, God has done this. Our periods of growth happened with very few planned "programs" in place. Now the rub: How do we proceed? I hope that we can keep it simple (whatever that means).
Interesting times.
I can't believe it's been two months since my last post. I don't have a good
excuse but here are some options.
1. My dog ate all of my blog drafts which ha...
1 comments:
Yes, His plans are so much bigger than anything we could ever imagine. When we try to "orchestrate" something that only God can truly handle, we are destined to damage what God intends to be perfect. He choreographs all of the movements for all of the baton twirlers in this parade of life, but so many of us try to run with the baton instead of participate in His perfect production. Then we wonder why no one is joining our parade - we are not in it anymore! We are running a race instead of participating in His masterpiece.
We may feel we were handed a baton to take to the next destination, but in reality God wants us to enjoy being part of the whole masterpiece. He knows all of the participants, and how one movement by one of them will affect all of the other participants. We do not. What we see from below is a tedious yet difficult (even sometimes painful) step by step routine. We need to try to keep a heavenly perspective in mind.
We may never know how our lives will impact others. Our "little" actions as part of God's family may have huge impact and life-changing results when we let God use us in His grand production. Yet we may never see these great outcomes, or understand why we go through what we do until we reach Heaven. As a part of the team that is God's church, we need to let God direct the movements … both big and small.
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