Wednesday, March 24, 2010

What drives your church?

I found the following paragraph in Kennon Callahan's book Small Strong Congregations to be very powerful.

"Small, strong congregations are gift-driven, not getting-driven.  They are strength-driven, not weakness-driven.  They are spirit-driven, not size-driven.  Small, strong congregations are high-compassion congregations.  They are mission-driven congregations.  They do not ask, 'What's in it for us?"  They are not interested in church growth.  They are interested in people growth."

The question each of us must ask is what drives our church?  It's essential that we answer this question honestly and not answer it as we think others would think we should answer it.  The back-up question then for those of us in leadership is what drives us.  Ministry is, or should be, about people.  One of the strengths of smaller churches is that people are more important than performances or programs, but I have seen some smaller churches that were so intense about growing larger that it forgot the people while it focused on finding the elusive program that would lead to dynamic growth.  Usually, such churches never find that program, and having abandoned the people, they only grow smaller until they finally die.

I'll ask the question again.  What drives your church?  What drives your own personal ministry?

1 comment:

Solid Rock or Sinking Sand said...

Jesus drives our church and when you leave Him out of the picture, the church dies. God bless, Lloyd