How Badly Do We Want It?

            What do you think the most important thing is in achieving a goal?

            It may not be the first thing you think of.  I don’t think the most important thing in achieving a goal is ability or talent or money or time or resources or anything like that.  Those are all important, but I think the most important thing in achieving a goal is passion.

            The reason I think that is that if we have passion, if we really want to achieve something badly enough, we will almost always find a way to do it.  We can increase our ability and improve our talent.  We can raise money.  We can find more time.  We can acquire more resources.  We can get everything we need to achieve a goal if we want to badly enough. 

On the other hand, if we don’t have that passion, all the ability, talent, money, time, and resources in the world will not be enough to achieve the goal.  We may get something done, but we won’t do it well.  We won’t really accomplish what we set out to do if we don’t have the passion to accomplish it.

That brings me to the subject of church growth.  Everyone I’ve ever talked to, at every church I’ve ever been part of, has said they wanted their church to grow.  The reasons varied from a desire to spread the word of God to simple survival of the local church and everything in-between, but the goal has always been the same:  we want our church to grow.

When we say that, though, what do we really mean?  After all, there are lots of things I want and would like to see happen.  For example, I’d like to see the Minnesota Twins win the World Series this year.  Am I going to do anything to make that happen?  No.  I’m going to sit in front of my television set and watch.  Sometimes, I’ll turn on the radio and listen.  Either way, my involvement in the process will be completely passive.  I may want the Twins to win, I may be rooting for them to win, but I’m not going to do anything to help them win.  I’ll simply be a spectator in the process.

Is that how we view church growth?  Is it something we want and would like to see happen, but don’t actually do anything to make happen.  Is it something we’re rooting for, but for which we remain spectators?

God does not need spectators.  God needs people who want to get in the game.  It’s entirely possible for each of the three churches of our parish to grow, but it’s not going to happen by itself.  It’s going to take people who are passionate about making each of those three churches grow.  It’s going to take people who want to see it happen so badly that we’ll do what we can to increase our abilities, improve our talents, raise more money, find more time, acquire more resources, and do whatever else we need to do to make it happen.

I’m confident that the people of the Wheatland Parish are those people.  I’ve seen some good things start to happen here.  I’ve seen the beginnings of some of that passion.  We need to not just keep that passion going, but to make it grow.  We need to make it grow within ourselves and we need to spread it to others.

Growing a church is not easy.  God never promised that it would be easy.  It was not easy for the disciples.  It was not easy for the early church.  It was not easy during the Reformation.  It was not easy for John Wesley when the Methodist movement started.  And it’s not easy now.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.  There’s no reason to think that the each of the churches of this parish cannot grow, and there’s every reason to think that they can.  If you want to see one of those reasons, go look in the mirror.  Each of you is the reason your church can grow.

It won’t happen by itself, but it can happen.  And it will, if each of us is passionate about making it happen.  Let’s move forward together, passionately devoted to making each of the churches of this parish grow.