Another look at a healthy dream-Church

Just before I left for Russia in my study I came upon a discovery that I shared with you – the 8 identifiable principles of the church growth in the New Testament. After all the need for a healthy and balanced church is not only deduced by the empirical research of church scholars, and not only mentioned in the writings of the Spirit of Prophecy, but on the pages of the Holy Book.

As I taught about it, I asked my students for a bonus on the exam to match the 8 quality characteristics with virtues outlined by Peter in his 2^nd letter.

Most of the answers were a solid consensus on 2^nd Peter 1:5-7

1. Peter calls for leaders to empower, to be diligent, to make every effort, to do our utmost to support the faith.

2. Our faith needs goodness, we tell the good news through our good works, we evangelize by taking care of people’s needs.

3. The good works, virtue requires understanding and knowledge. Our ministry must flow out of knowing our calling and our spiritual giftedness.

4. Truly spiritual lives are temperate and lived under control of the Spirit. True passionate spirituality flows from following disciplines of the Spirit.

5. Disciplined life is patient and perseveres collaborating with other believers, hence the structurally the Body of Christ is functional and efficient.

6. Godliness and devotion are just synonyms for worship, inspired and inspiring worship.

7. Brotherly kindness describes the ideal of Christian fellowship, community created in small groups where total care is provided.

8. Finally, the agape love – the loving relationships – are the crown of Christian life.

Some commentators took liberty to suggest that these are in hierarchical order, one contingent on the other and building up as a pyramid. There is no such intent in Peter’s letter. He simply tells that Christian must have all these. There is no particular order or sequence – they’re simply present in the life of a Christian.

That is why we talk all the time about these 8 things. These are the values that must become our DNA, that must become our nature of how we live, how we minister, how we do things.

Peter continues in verses 8-9: “if these things be in you, and abound, you will not be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In other words – the balanced presence of these 8 qualities will make you productive, effective and useful. Peter continues: “whoever lacks, or fails to develop these is blind, at least, very shortsighted, and already forgotten that God has cleansed them from their old life of sin.”

We continue our diligent efforts to become a healthy church, where all these virtues are present and balanced. In a few short weeks 30 of the church active members will take the annual survey to check the pulse of our church. Quoting Peter (verses 10-11) I could only say: “my brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Love – the ultimate Fruit of the Spirit

“Wait a moment!” - you may object. “I thought that fruits of the Spirit were love + joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23) Right?

Please note that the fruit is in singular!!! Ever noticed that? The final and ultimate fruit of the Spirit is Love! The rest is it’s constituent working parts. So, let me amend the translation: The fruit of the Spirit is Love, which is: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. WOW! That’s exactly what I said this week in my devotional study.

Each individual term reflects shades of Love.

Joy is Rejoicing Love. Geek chara means happiness as divine gift, same word from which we get Grace. The whole Gospel is the Word of Joy. It’s same kind of joy with which the seventy came back after doing wonders in Jesus name (Luke 10:17)

Peace is Reconciling Love. Greek eirene is equivalent for Hebrew shalom. It’s the harmony that God brings in creation from chaos, it’s the climate of the New Jerusalem. This is what Paul is talking about in his letter to Romans 12:16 “live in harmony with one another.”

Patience is Enduring Love. Greek for patience is makrothymia, meaning holding back the thymos, anger, for a long, long time. Just as James puts it “be patient, do not grumble against each other.” (5:7-9)

Kindness is Amiable Love. Greek term chrestotes is always expressed in relationships: being interested in others, giving gifts, showing attention, listening to people, remembering names. Kind of love that the Good Samaritan showed on the Jericho Road. (Luke 10:30-35)

Goodness is Correcting Love. Greek term agathosyne means striving for the standards which God defined as “good.” It’s the attitude of opposition to all forms of evil in our life and in lives of others. Kind of love Jesus showed overturning tables cleansing the Temple (Mark 11:15-17)

Faithfulness is Reliable Love. Greek here is the same as faith – pistis. Love that can be trusted. Remember that parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30)? Just as God entrusted his riches to us, so does He expect our trust. Jesus said whoever can be trusted with little can be trusted with much (Luke 16:10-12)

Gentleness is Humble Love. Greek praytes is opposite of argumentative, self-righteous stubbornness. Gentle people submit easily to God and others. True leadership is characterized by gentleness (1^st Timothy 3:3) The kind of leadership shown by Jesus washing disciples feet. It’s carrying each other burdens (Galatians 6:1-3)

Self-control is Disciplined Love. The Greek word egkrateia is semantically related to askeo, meaning sobriety and restraint to the point of ascetism. Paul knew well this discipline as he writes in 1^st Corinthians 9:24-27 “I restrain my body not to be disqualified from the prize.”

So, How Loving are You? The basic condition for the church to be healthy is being loving, which means: rejoicing, reconciling, enduring, amiable, correcting, reliable, humble and disciplined. Welcome to my dream church!

Loving Relationships will “Tell London” that Jesus is coming Soon

This week I had one of those AHA! moments. I was reading during my devotional time 2^nd Peter and these words came flooding at me:

…as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue…But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness…

That’s in 2^nd Peter 1:5-9. peter is giving a balanced picture of a believer, balanced picture of a Christian community. Such living offers rewards every moment. Without these virtues – blindness, shortsightedness, cannot see what’s right before you.

The reason I got so excited is that these virtues express the eight quality characteristics that a healthy church must have. We’ve been talking about our church health and improving quality of the eight essential fundamentals:

Loving Relationships, Caring Groups,

Inspiring Worship, Passionate Spirituality,

Evangelism for Needs, Ministry by Gifts,

Empowering Leaders, Functional Structures

The Apostle Peter makes clear that when we grow in these – we become productive, fruitful, we grow!!!

One thing all growing churches have in common – they are Loving Churches! Churches that place highest priority on Loving Relationships improve in every other category. Love is the ultimate goal and destination for every Christian. It is the goal of our church family.

The only way we begin to Tell London, to tell our families, to tell our co-workers, our kids, that Jesus is coming soon – when we love them and wish them to be saved with Jesus. Love will Tell!!!

Traditional Christian churches had entered the Lent season 21^st of February reminding each other of the Suffering of Jesus on our behalf, in preparation for his Sacrifice. The secular world tells us that faith in Jesus maybe historical but is pointless. Most recently James Cameron, (Canadian film director of the “Titanic” fame) says he found Jesus’ family tomb. We could laugh just as God laughs at scoffers (Psalm 2:4), knowing the real truth – the Love of Jesus transforming our lives, ever active today, because Jesus is alive.

What we need is the evidence that the world may see Jesus – and that is possible only when we love one another. (John 13;35) May our Loving Relationships become our identity card.

Love will Tell!

Celebrating Growth @ North Church

With joy I can report that we have improved in most areas of our church life. I am talking “significant improvement!” Our average is up from 33 to 52. In areas of small groups and loving relationships our scores are 12 units higher than last year.
While the measuring tools we use tell us WHAT is happening, it is up to us to figure out WHY these trends are such. This survey involved broad spectrum of church members and worship participants.
Seeing a slight decline in spirituality I wonder if we began to rely on our efforts in fixing things, forgetting that it is not our rowing skills, or the length of our ores, but the wind in our spiritual sail that will move this church-boat in God’s direction. Remember, we live by both/and, not either/or principle. We must use our skills and energies while fully anticipating and relying on God’s Power to move us as He wills.

Celebrating Growth @ South Church

With joy I can report that we have improved in most areas of our church life. I am talking “significant improvement!” Our average is up from 35 to 43. In areas of small groups and loving relationships our scores are 12 units higher than last year.
While the measuring tools we use tell us WHAT is happening, it is up to us to figure out WHY these trends are such. This survey involved broad spectrum of church members and worship participants.
Seeing a slight decline in spirituality I wonder if we began to rely on our efforts in fixing things, forgetting that it is not our rowing skills, or the length of our ores, but the wind in our spiritual sail that will move this church-boat in God’s direction. Remember, we live by both/and, not either/or principle. We must use our skills and energies while fully anticipating and relying on God’s Power to move us as He wills.

BIOTICS - the opposite of usual

Here we are: done our second evaluation, waiting for results, wondering to see some objective data of our progress as a health-improving church. Over the past two month we looked at six principles of thinking and decision making according to God’s original design. This tool we’ve been using – the NCD – is not a prefabricated program for the church, it’s just a tool to use. Instead of offering “cut flowers” it intends to help churches grow their own.
Next week at our NCD potluck our elders will review the six “biotic” principles as our values paradigm, after which we will present the results of survey.
Right now we are doing things habitually, the way we used to. Yet, as we practice the biotic principles time after time they will become our habit, we would be more intuitive in making right decisions for the church. The value of principles we are sharing is not only in telling us how to act, but also in helping us to creatively react to challenges in a way that supports growth. These principles are really Biblical principles customized to changing situations.
The bottom line – our intention is to recreate an environment where God given growth will build the Church. Let’s remove the barriers of sin. Lets lift up lids of human limitations, and let God build His Kingdom among us.
Remember:

• we are made for INTERDEPENDENT living, where each one is connected and our experiences affect all;
  
• God’s Kingdom is meant to MULTIPLY continually as success means successors and disciples produce disciples;
  
• God is able to turn and REDIRECT everything for His purpose, all our ENERGIES can be transformed in a single direction for God’s glory;
  
• Everyone to be used and use in a two-way street give-n’- take exchange of MUTUAL BENEFITS;
  
• LIVING TOGETHER we must consider networking together for one-anotherness;
  
• FUNCTIONAL means useful, means purposeful and constructive.
  

Think on these things before attempting any action or reaction:

• How will it affect others? What are possible side-effects of it?
  
• Am I reproducing and multiplying what God entrusted me for His Glory?
  
• Am I fighting life, or trusting God to redirect all waves for His purpose?
  
• As I serve do I allow to be served, am I being refilled regularly?
  
• Do we serve one-another in what we do?
  
• Is it useful, functional? Will it build up or tear down?
  

As a pastor I don’t want to push and shove my churches in our own strength. For it is not by our power, but by the Holy Spirit that we grow. God’s blessings are not accidents. For He know what plans He has for us! Plans to prosper, plans to give us hope and future. (Jeremiah 29:11)

FUNCTIONALITY – why do we do things we do ?

Nothing stays perfect on this earth forever. Nothing we invent stays forever ideal. Agree? Why then, whenever a change is introduced, it is so hard to give old ways? A question that we must constantly be asking: is it still functional? Whenever you’ve got something there comes a time when you look at it and have to admit that it served its purpose, got tired and is not functional….
Are there certain things we do that no one knows anymore why and there are no benefits from it to anyone? How do we evaluate our functions for effectiveness? Do we know the purpose in everything that we do? Does what we do accomplish the purpose for which it was designed in the first place? What criteria do we apply to assess functionality?
God created everything for a specific function. There is no redundancy, or unnecessary items in God’s design. Everything has a purpose! In fact a synonym could be used for functionality: fruitfulness. Naturally, when purposeful function is done it results in a product, a fruit is produced. Do our actions produce desired outcome? Do we produce fruit in our lives?
Christian community gets quite upset about gay marriages, pointing out that this goes against God’s design, against God’s purpose of reproduction, and therefore is an abomination. In fact, anything “unnatural” is considered abhorrent. Yet, are we consistent in all areas of life, judging ourselves by this criteria of fruitfulness too? Do we deliver what we were intended to? Do we produce fruits in our lives which God created us for?
Jesus talked continually about the “success check” for our lives: “by their fruits you shall know them.” (Matthew 7:16-18) From the parable of the fig tree cut down for not producing good quality fruit (Matthew 3:10) to the good soil that produces fruit hundredfold (Matthew 13:8), to His direct testimony in the upper room right after the Last Supper that He appointed us to bear fruit that would last (John 15:16) Fruitbearing is our way of glorifying the Father God and being true disciples of Jesus (John 15: 8) This week I read this statement in the Spirit of Prophecy: “Men may profess faith in the truth; but if it does not make them sincere, kind, patient, forbearing, heavenly-minded, it is a curse to its possessors, and through their influence it is a curse to the world.” (Desire of Ages, 310) Just like Jesus said: no fruit – be ye cursed….
The simplest criteria of evaluating functionality is the fruitbearing! How do you know if a person is baptized by the Holy Spirit? The fruits of the Spirit will be present (Galatians 5:22-23). How do you know if a Christian is a true disciple? The fruit of a tree is another tree – fruit of a disciple is another disciple….
In daily activities of life apostle Paul employed a different term for this same principle: “usefulness.” 1st Corinthians 10:23 equates “useful” with “edify” a word borrowed from architecture, meaning to “build up.”
We were created for God’s Great purpose, to praise His Name Glorious, to bear much fruit, to live useful lives, to be functional, to serve efficiently; to be healthy, whole and alive! Get LIFE Church! Get functional!