This is a very eye opening and aligning with Scripture post.More importantly, it touches base with my personal walk with Jesus… and His Church. Please take a minute and read Dennis’ words. Perfect timing for this one in my walk… as if God had anything less than perfect timing.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, talks about looking at our churches through critical lenses:
If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.
In a tremendous and much needed post, titled On Constantly Taking Your Church’s Temperature, Jared Wilson expands upon Bonhoeffer’s insights, applying them to the contemporary church. Rather, Wilson applies them to ambitious pastors and zealous church members who are overly critical about their own local congregations.
As Wilson relays, Bonhoeffer also said:
When…
View original post 947 more words
ccragamuffin
mtsweat
Wonderfully supportive for my much-prayed over decision to continue in my local Methodist congregation and serve to light it up within!
yeah, I wish the new books on mission would have one chapter on this…thanks!
Thanks for re-blogging my post. Credit should definitely go to Jared Wilson. I really only interacted with his post as an intro to get folks to read what he had written. Nevertheless, I feel honored to have you repost my Intro.
Thanks Mike, I shared this one as well. Very well written with excellent points. We all to often want to point the finger and blame someone else, while taking no responsibility for our part in what might be wrong in our churches…like our own attitude. We do the same thing with God, we run away and hide…or we try to blame Him for what happens to us that we don’t like. Reality is we do a lot of things to ourselves by our own attitudes and choices.
Glad you are back! 🙂
Be Blessed
Greg