Lessons Learned When a Church is Growing

I was asked what lessons I've learned while helping to lead a church that has been experiencing growth - a big question! I'll try to give you 10.

1. Growth hurts. It stretches and challenges us beyond our comfort zone, making room for greater capacity. If we try to avoid these symptoms, we won't grow and our capacity will be diminished.

2. Growth is scary. It involves risk. But with risk comes great adventure! Risk achieves what others thought was impossible.

3. Growth tests our commitment. Relationships, motivations, and attitudes will be tested, and the refining process brings out the highest quality gold.

4. Success involves failure. We don't like failure, but we learn from it. It constantly pushes us to God to assess ourselves, to renew our dreams, to expand our creativity - He is the ultimate source and end of all we do. God is endless in possibilities, hope, creativity, opportunity.....

5. We need positive, believing, hope-filled, creative people around us. They breathe life, speak life, see the potential, the possibilities, and they dream. The nay-sayers, the "realists", the offended, the negative and critical sap all vitality, creativity, hope and nourishment - it's like killing a young plant before it has the opportunity to become firmly established.

6. Good fruit rocks! Celebrate it all over the place, no matter how small. See the good, advertise the good, focus on the good, lift it up and let it shine. Shout out what God is doing. Problems always exist, but they can't be our focus. People will be drawn to what God is doing, and how will they know unless we tell them?

7. God is in charge. He's firmly in control and our journey belongs to Him, leads to Him. Therefore our trust must be firmly rooted in Him at all times.

8. When I can't, God can.

9. Rejoicing is a choice. I must choose to rejoice, choose not to be distracted from it, choose to seek the joy and express it as best I can.

10. Growing a Church is about growing the Body of Christ. We choose to do it in an organized setting which meets weekly - but our purpose is One. To lift up Christ, to help others be drawn into relationship with Him, to grow in relationship with Him. He is what we are all about.

There. 10 things I've learned and am still learning.

What Kind of Faithfulness Do We Have?

We are very proud to call ourselves "the church", to take on the identity of Christ's body, removing ourselves from the perceived stigma of simply being an organized entity. "I don't go to church, but we are the church". But if the distinction is so precious to us, do we really contemplate what it means?

If we are Christ's body, we are in sacred union with GOD. I don't know about you, but in my mind and heart, this is no small matter.

I read a book recenty on marriage, and I was struck by the similarities between the struggles in marriage and struggles in the Church. It is grievous that the Church has statistically eclipsed the world's divorce rate - we are now leading the pack - and the reasons for divorce mirror some of the issues that the Church experiences on a regular basis.

Some reasons given for divorce:

• God told me to leave my spouse (yes, people actually have said this)
• Marriage is just an institution, and I want relationship
• I'm just not happy in this relationship
• You are holding me back from succeeding (amazing)
• I've been seeing someone else (also a common problem)
• I've changed, my needs have changed
• You've changed and I don't like change
• It's too hard to stay
• I've wasted my time in this relationship
• This relationships isn't exciting enough

...same reasons people give for leaving a church

You get the drift. We can all find ways to try and justify unfaithfulness, and we can sound self-righteous while doing so. But when a covenant relationship is entered into, it's for keeps. Perhaps the permissibility of divorce within our Church culture, and the underlying lack of faithfulness, is the root of the same struggle for faithfulness in the Church? It is so much easier to give up, move on, or make an exchange than to do the nitty gritty hard work of keeping a relationship together. Will it always get better if you try? No. Does that excuse the covenant made?

The devastation of divorce is real, and there is a devastation in Churches when they experience faithflessness. I'm often saddened by the callousness of people to the pain Churches, Pastors, leaders and friends experience as a result of faithflessness - but I can't say I'm surprised.

Can we turn the tide? Can we reverse the trend of divorce in the Church? Can we strengthen the faithfulness of peoples hearts in relationship to one another? I believe it is possible - anything is possible if we believe. So we will continue, one marriage, one relationship at a time. And in the meantime, I'll be checking my own heart.