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As a young church worker, it can be easy to approach church with an attitude something akin to John Lennon's "All You Need Is Love". We can think, "If I just love people and preach the Word and pray, it'll all work out."
Don't get me wrong, the centrality of love (1 Cor. 13, Galatians 5), the Word (Deuteronomy 6, John 4), and prayer (Ephesians 5:18-20) is vital. But we live in a fallen world, a world where people don't pray sometimes, where people aren't interested in knowing, loving, and living according to God's Word. And in light of this, we need to realize that the church is both (as one of my pastor's says) an organism and and organization. We need to live with a view that we are the Body of Christ (a living entity) and also realize that when the widows were not being fed in Acts 6, the apostles made a strategic and organized AND Spirit-led decision to put Stephen (a man "full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom") in charge of reconciling the issue.
I think in the last 50 years, we have swung the pendulum toward organizing too much, toward planning and toward the strategic. But even so, we can't toss out all organization in favor of just hoping for the best and shooting blindly.
The church has to be Spirit-led, and the Spirit will often lead us to organize and be strategic. It doesn't have to be an either-or, it can be both-and.
- tC
Don't get me wrong, the centrality of love (1 Cor. 13, Galatians 5), the Word (Deuteronomy 6, John 4), and prayer (Ephesians 5:18-20) is vital. But we live in a fallen world, a world where people don't pray sometimes, where people aren't interested in knowing, loving, and living according to God's Word. And in light of this, we need to realize that the church is both (as one of my pastor's says) an organism and and organization. We need to live with a view that we are the Body of Christ (a living entity) and also realize that when the widows were not being fed in Acts 6, the apostles made a strategic and organized AND Spirit-led decision to put Stephen (a man "full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom") in charge of reconciling the issue.
I think in the last 50 years, we have swung the pendulum toward organizing too much, toward planning and toward the strategic. But even so, we can't toss out all organization in favor of just hoping for the best and shooting blindly.
The church has to be Spirit-led, and the Spirit will often lead us to organize and be strategic. It doesn't have to be an either-or, it can be both-and.
- tC
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