What have we really figured out?

This video segues nicely into the post I have been wanting to write for some time

As a minister in a pretty traditional church it goes without saying that there are a lot of things that we do that have “always been done” that are not necessarily effective.  When I look at the landscape and the history of what brought us to our present it is very obvious to me that we have done what almost every other long standing church has done at some point in time in their history.  Somewhere, someone, or some group looked over what they were doing and said” Ok now we have got a good church” and were satisfied with that.  And therein lies the problem.

In this journey of life the one thing we can figure out is that we don’t have it figured out. Just like in the video many churches “think ” they know how to reach people but there  inclusive speech and condescending attitudes only turn people off . And yet those members of that church probably think they have it going on. They are setting themselves up for failure in the long term.

I was in a short facebook conversation about contentment and how sometimes we need to just be happy with the way things are going in our ministry and that change for the sake of change is not good. I agree with the last part but the first part I am adamant about. There is at no point a time where we can sit back and be satisfied. the call the cause the need is to great. We have to be about the Lord’s work and if we think we are running the perfect ministry I got news for ya…. there is gonna be some problems.  God is perfect we are substandard and we need to be re-evaluating ourselves constantly.

I will say that it will hurt. Self critique is never easy but in that moment we give God the opportunity to have our focus long enough to actually speak to us and guide us and until that happens we are working in vain.