All the churches of the Wheatland Parish are
fairly small. And so, we talk sometimes about what we can do to make our
churches grow.
Now, believe me, we are not the only churches that talk
about this. Churches constantly talk about how they can make their church
grow. Every time I’ve ever been to Annual Conference, there have been
seminars about church growth. And there are seminars, meetings at other
times, too. There are books, videos, all sorts of things. Really,
there’s an entire industry around the subject of church growth.
But here’s the reality of the situation. You cannot
make any of our churches grow. And neither can I.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying our
churches cannot grow. They can. And I believe they will. But
you and I cannot make that happen. Only God can make it happen.
Only God can make our churches grow.
And in saying that, I’m not saying that you and I should do
nothing, that we should sit back and wait for God to start filling up our
churches. There are things that we should do. There are things that
we are doing. But all we can do is set the stage. All we can do is
make conditions more favorable. God is the one who will make our churches
grow. If we try to do it by ourselves, without God, we will surely
fail. We can do everything right, we can take all the advice from all
those church growth experts, but it will still be up to God to make our
churches grow.
Look at our reading from the book of Acts for today.
If you look at that, you can see the disciples and the people who were
following them were doing everything right. Bible study: we’re told
that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching”. Prayer:
they also devoted themselves to “the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
Worship: we’re told that “everyone was filled with awe at the many
wonders and signs performed by the apostles.” Generosity: we’re
told that “the believers were together and had everything in common.”
Missions: we’re told that “They sold property and possessions to give to
anyone who had need.” Fellowship: “They continued to meet together
in the temple courts.” Outreach: “They broke bread in their homes
and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.” Publicity: we’re
told they were “enjoying the favor of all the people.”
I mean, when you look at that, it looks like they pretty
much checked every box. All those things that you learn in the church
growth seminars, they were doing them. I cannot think of anything I’ve
ever heard from a church growth expert that these people were not doing.
But did they make their church grow? Were the
apostles and their followers responsible for making the church grow?
No. That’s not what Luke, writing in the book of Acts, says. What
Luke says is this: “The Lord added to their number daily those who were
being saved.”
The Apostles did everything right. But it was still
the Lord who made their group grow. No one else, and nothing else.
God did it. Not them.
Now, does that mean that the things the apostles and their
followers did were worthless? Not at all. They were very
important. But what was important about them was not the things they
did. What was important about them is that they showed faithfulness to
God.
That’s the reason they did the things they did. They
did not do them to grow their group. I’m sure they hoped the group would
grow. They were trying to do what Jesus said, to go and make
disciples. But the reason they were trying to do that is not because they
wanted to have a big group. The reason they were trying to do that is
because Jesus told them to do it. It did not have to do with what they
wanted. It had to do with being faithful to God.
Maybe that seems like a distinction without a difference,
but I think there’s a tremendous difference. I think the difference here
is tremendously important.
You see, if we do things because we want our church to
grow, what are we doing? We’re taking the responsibility on
ourselves. We’re saying that we are the ones who are going to make
our church grow. And of course, if our churches do grow, then we can take
the credit for it. We can say that we were the ones who succeeded and
made the churches grow.
But if we do things because we want to be faithful to God,
then what are we doing? We’re putting the responsibility on God.
And we’re also saying that we trust God. We’re saying that we believe
that if we stay faithful to God, if we do our best to serve God and show love
to God, if we do our best to obey the commandments that God gave us, then we
trust that God will bless what we do.
We don’t put any limits on that blessings. We don’t
say when it’s going to happen. We don’t say how it’s going to
happen. We don’t say what form that blessing is going to take. We
just say that we trust that God’s blessing will come. It will come in
God’s way, and at God’s time, but we believe that it will surely come.
If that’s our attitude, then if the church grows, who gets
the credit? God does. God is the one who made it happen. God
is the one who’s responsible for it all. The only thing we did was serve
God and stay faithful to God. But the result of our service and
faithfulness was in God’s hands, not ours.
You see the difference, I’m sure. In the first
instance, we are taking the responsibility on ourselves, and we’re giving
ourselves the credit for success. In the second instance, we’re giving
the responsibility to God and we’re giving God the credit for success.
But of course, that leads to a question. What happens
if our church does not grow?
Well, if we’ve done these
things to make the church grow, then we’ve failed, right? We did all
these things to make the church grow, and it did not grow. We were
failures.
But if we did those things to
be faithful to God, if we did those things to serve God and to show love to
God, and our church does not grow, have we failed? Not at all.
We’ve succeeded. Because that’s God’s definition of success: being
faithful to God and serving God and loving God. If we do what God wants
us to do, we’ve succeeded, no matter what the results might be.
But still, we ask, what
happened? Why did God not bless what we did and make our church
grow?
Well, a couple of things.
One, maybe God still will. Again, we are not supposed to put limits on
God’s blessings. God may be waiting for a better time to make our church
grow.
But even if not, that does not
mean that God did not bless what we did. It could just be that the
blessing has come, or is coming, in a way that we did not expect.
God is not obligated to bless
us in the way we have in mind. God might, but God might not. In
fact, quite often God does not. God knows more than we do. God sees
farther into the future than we do.
It’s like Garth Brooks sang
years ago, “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers.” I can think of
a lot of times in my life where God blessed me by not giving me what I wanted,
because God had something better in mind. I suspect you can think of some
of those times, too. And that does not just apply in our personal
lives. It applies to the church, too.
If, as churches, we stay
faithful to God, if we serve God, if we listen to God and love God, God will
bless our churches. But we need to keep our eyes open. Because if
we don’t, God might bless us, and we’ll miss it. And what a sad thing
that would be, for us to not even notice the blessings that God has given us.
The apostles did the right
things, but they did not do them to grow their church. They knew they
could not make their church grow. So instead of doing things to make
their church grow, they did things to be faithful to God. They did things
to serve God and show love to God. They did things because they were what
Jesus had told them to do. And God blessed what they did.
We cannot make our churches
grow, either. So, instead of doing things to make the churches grow,
let’s do things to be faithful to God. Let’s do things to serve God and
show love to God. Let’s do the things Jesus told us to do. And
let’s keep our eyes open to see how God will bless what we do. And God
will surely bless them. Because God is always faithful.
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