Knowing and Doing

The continuing saga of this blog..........wow!! Did I tell you that I have been a part of churches that suffer from these crisis'? Each one suffered because of their incorrect focus. I believe that when we do not focus on the head of the church, Jesus Christ, and the blueprint for church found in the Word of God, we will not succeed. "By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked." 1 John 2:3-6 (NASB95) We are told to keep His Word and walk as Jesus walked. If not, John calls us liars, living in falsehood, working against God's Will which is not the truth. Identity Crisis #6: We have treated the church as...

Identity Crisis #5: The church has misunderstood what church membership is. One of the fallacies of church life is counting the number of people present in Sunday School and worship to show what "we" have. A common question among pastor's is "How many are you running?" By doing this, we are identifying numbers as success so that we have created a "faithfulness equals attendance" mentality, which in my opinion is a WORKS salvation. Don't get me wrong, I am not presenting a case for NOT going to church.......hear me out!! Membership then is reduced to attendance and giving, not anything else. This is a major crisis. If you are a believer and you are following the Great Commandment that our Lord taught, "Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength" then "love your neighbor as yourself"; you have a desire to worship the Lord corporately and to be around God's people in something that God created for worsh...

Identity Crisis #4: The church has been transformed by the culture of the world. It has been too long that we have opened God's church, the body of Christ, to the culture of the world. The following examples I give you are from experiences I have had in my own life as part of a church. I have understood pastor's say that they are CEO's of the church. Since when has God called you to a high paying salary, a private jet, greediness, selfishness, and a holier than thou attitude. We are supposed to live the life of a servant, teaching and preaching God's Word humbly, and applying that teaching to ourselves as well as teaching doctrine, theology, and application to the congregation. Paul writes in Philippians 2 that we are to have the same attitiude of Christ...."humility and obedience", so we, pastor's, are to model this to the congregation and the community. Instead of preaching "you" to the crowd, we need to be preaching "we"....be...

Identity Crisis #3: The people within the church, the believers, disciples, sheep, etc. do not know what "church" truly is. They have unrealistic expectations and traditional ideas of how church is supposed to be and press that amongst the body of Christ. The evidence that I propose: Pastors: First, we don't stay very long at any church, (I think the average is 3 years) so the body of Christ where we serve do not trust pastors because they know that another church will entice them, a bigger salary or bigger fellowship somewhere else will entice them, problems at the current church are too overwhelming, or a "I want a fresh start" attitude. If we really dig in at the church where God has placed us and truly shepherd His Church then this attitude of how church is supposed to be can change. Second, pastor's need to lead people to the Scriptures, the blueprint of the Church. It must be preached and taught over and over. We are to lead the sheep to the gree...