VITAL CONGREGATIONS

"Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness." (Psalm 29:2 NKJV)

Show me a vital congregation and I will point to a church that gives faithful attention to its worship. And there is no litmus test for the degree of liturgy. Many churches that experience vitality, faithfulness, and growth are churches that have a high degree of liturgy, and others have hardly any fixed liturgy at all. (And I don’t mean by “growth” just numbers: I often make a distinction to my congregation between “growth” and “swelling.” One is a sigh of health, and one is a clear sign of illness.) Perhaps there are tests of the degree of congregational participation; the extent to which the Bible is used as source book, study book, and a book of enrichment; and the uses of music are, in fact, praise to God rather than a rehearsal for a concert hall performance. 

-- Zan W. Holmes, Jr. in “Encountering Jesus”

#5733

PEOPLE OF PRAYER

"Be persistent in prayer, and keep alert as you pray, giving thanks to God.”  (Colossians 4:2 GNT)

What the Church needs today is not more technology or better, not new organizational models or more novel methods, but people whom the Holy Spirit can use -- people of prayer, people mighty in prayer.

-- E. M. Bounds, adapted

#5474

STARVING FOR CHRIST

“Those who accepted Peter’s message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:41-42)

People by the thousands became Christians because they saw Simon Peter's commitment to the church.  Peter was devoted to the church, and with good reason.  There is no institution in the world that serves people better than the church does.  There is no institution in the world that helps families more than the church does.  There is no institution in the world that redeems lives like the church.  There is no institution in the world that teaches love like the church.  There is no institution in the world that lifts God up and inspires righteousness like the church does.  There is no institution in the world that cultivates goodness like the church does.

But even more than that, the church has Jesus Christ!  The world is starving to death for Jesus Christ, and we have Him.  We are here to share Jesus Christ with a needy world, and everything we do is for that purpose… so that we can share the love of Christ; so that we can tell people about Him.

--  James W. Moore in “When You're a Christian, the Whole World is from Missouri"

#5039

GROWING IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE - Part 2

“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”  (Ephesians 4:14-16 NIV)

Now and again people ask me what I perceive my job to be. My answer is always the same: to bring people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, then to help them grow up in Christ. That’s the work of the church.

“How about a place to find friends?” someone asks. Wonderful; there’s no better place to do so. But that’s a by-product of what we do. “How about the church being a place for cultural enrichment?” Excellent. But the university, the art museum and the orchestra can take care of that if we fail -- but no one else will provide a place where people can grow up in Christ. “But what about our social events -- you know, bridge, bowling, drama, pot luck suppers?” I love ‘em. But other places provide those opportunities, while they don’t give us a place to grow in Christ.

Hear me: there are a great many things we can offer in the church, and should offer. But let us remember that they are secondary. They are beautiful by-products, but they’re not our primary business. We didn’t come into existence -- either the [local church] or Christendom as a whole -- to be a political, social, or cultural institution, but to bring human beings to new and continuing, effective life in Jesus Christ.

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas in a sermon entitled “What I Have Learned About Growing Up”



#4773

THE NATURAL OUTCOME OF PREACHING CHRIST

“[Paul and Barnabas] preached the gospel in that city and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith.”  (Acts 14:21-22 NIV)

Paul, the sometime tent maker and sometime fully supported missionary, established local churches wherever he went. Yet it is perhaps misleading to think his church planting as a strategy. Paul didn’t establish these communities merely as a means to an end, as though evangelism was more important than community, or as though he measured the success of the kingdom in terms of numbers rather than the quality of life which people experienced in these churches. Instead, these communities were the natural outcome of preaching Christ. They are also God’s appointed way of experiencing and demonstrating the Gospel’s power to transform people’s lives.

-- Mark Strom in “The Symphony of Scripture: Making Sense of the Bible’s Many Themes”


#4757

GOD MAKES THINGS GROW

“What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed, as the Lord has assigned to each his role. I planted the seed and Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”  (1 Corinthians 3:5-7 Berean Study Bible)

I truly believe that we are being called [by God] to reach out in bold and new ways and to experience phenomenal growth as a church, not for the purpose of pride and power, but because we have something great to offer -- something the world cannot live without… It is the Good News revealed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit.

-- Rev. Michael Roberts in the “Arkansas United Methodist” 


#4670