Sunday, November 28, 2010

Growth or a Sore Thumb

"In a healthy church, growth is the norm. In a not so healthy church, those who are growing stick out like a sore thumb."


I heard this quote recently, and I'm wondering how many of us would be able to say that growth is the norm in our churches? And its not talking about numbers, necessarily, but the growth of the individual Christians. Are more people    growing, or are more people just stagnantly hanging out at status quo? Are more people developing a love for theology and God's word, or only being spoon fed by the pastor once a week? 


I would say that a strong exposition of the word penetrates hearts. And when the word gets in your heart, the Holy Spirit definitely does some work.


What do you think?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my home church, growth is beginning. It was at a stale-mate for a while, but it's finally starting to move. It has been kind of interesting to see it start going.

I can only hope that I can reflect that growth in my own life as well.

I think the hardest part is that so many churches and Christians restrict themselves by rules, ideology and theology, that they put God in a box and forget what He is capable of. They forget that it only requires the faith of a mustard seed to make things happen, and so they begin to focus on the things that aren't necessarily as important.

I think if we (in general) could stop putting God in a box we'd see a lot more growth a lot faster.

Alissa:Adventurer said...

Thanks for reading and commenting!

I think you are right about people putting God in a box so often. But I think that the issue of growth just has to do with actually following what God has said. How many of us actually live like we are called to live in the bible? If we did, we would probably experience so much more growth. Confession of sin for example, we are called to do it, but do we actually talk to other Christians about our sin? Imagine the freedom and healing that would come!

I think a good church doesnt encourage anything crazy, but simply living like the bible tells us to, and reminding us of the gospel as often as possible- the ultimate factor of growth and fruit!