Archive for May, 2010
Some Thoughts On Church Growth
“Church Growth” – it is now the stuff of books and seminars and college courses. Men dedicate their lives to understanding how to achieve this holy grail. Huge temples are built and marketing experts consulted with the goal of being “seeker friendly” and filling the huge hall with crowds of people. Different denominations and congregations find different ways of fulfilling this goal. Rallies and “Crusades” are held to “bring in the sheaves” (although that ancient hymn is not sung anymore by the majority of those seeking “church growth” ).
Over the years I’ve seen “revivals” and “crusades” and “rallies” performed with the intent of bringing growth to the church. And over the years I’ve seen the same people flocking to the “altar call”, time after time after time. Yes, there are some souls reached through mass means. Yes there are some lives transformed. But are they really effective? The last figures I saw for a huge “Crusade” were something less than five percent (if I recall correctly it was less than one percent, but let’s be generous anyway) of the “decisions for Christ” actually resulted in a person who joined in with a local congregation.
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Mobile blogging
We live in a marvelous time. In my own brief life time we have gone from rotary phones on a a party line to cellular phones that allow one to call or be called over a vast portion of the world’s surface. We have gone from mail service that could take a week or longer to take a message from on end of the country to another, to email that can show up on another person’s computer, across the hall or half way around the globe, in a matter of seconds. Mimeograph machines had to have their templates painstakingly created by hand or on a type writer and each sheet of a multipage document had to be printed off separately and then each set had to be carefully correlated prior to handing out or mailing. Now one can type up, spell check, lay out and print, together with full color images or even high resolution photographs, multipage documents completely correlated and ready to be handed out or mailed. And that same document can be made into a pdf file which allows it to be sent via e-mail or posted to the internet so it can be downloaded. Such a document can be printed identically by virtually any computer and printer any where in the world.
Health Care
Growing up on the edge of the Amazon rain forest forms the back ground for a lot of my ideas and thoughts. Having a father and uncle who taught us to be upright and self reliant helped too. We were our own first responders, capable of taking care of any thing common such as a cold, a cut or a fever and even some of the more “exotic” situations such as amoeba, giardia, subcutaneous fly grubs, sand fleas, hookworm and hepatitis A – to name but a few of the things we came across. When a health issue would come we’d use common sense and do what we could to take care of it. Medicine was readily available over the counter at that time. For common problems we had no need of a doctor to tell us “You’ve got amoebas again, take flagyl every day for a week and you’ll get over it.” After you or a family member have had amoebas a few times you know the symptoms and the treatment. Why spend money on a doctor and a lab when they’ll just confirm the obvious? Of course if you’re in a place where the lab technician can’t ID an amoeba to save their soul and the doctor won’t trust your knowledge and the pharmacy won’t sell without a prescription – you’re in a bind. That happened to my mom one time. Soon after we hit the U.S. she came down with classic amoeba symptoms. I’ve no idea how much they spent on doctor and lab – but the lab never could come up with a diagnosis and the doctor wouldn’t prescribe based on another person’s (especially a non-medical professional) experience. So she suffered until she got back home to Brazil, walked into a pharmacy, bought the medicine and was well in a matter of days. We took personal responsibility for our health and actions and sought medical attention when something beyond our capabilities came up.
Favorite Sins
Sin – the wedge that separates man from God. Ever since Adam and Eve went against God’s will there has been a great chasm between God and man. Through Jesus the Christ, God reached out to bridge that gap. And His grace allows us to come into His presence, cleansed by the sacrificial death and resurrection of His Son.
If we walk in the light then we learn to abhor sin. But as humans we all harbor varying degrees of attraction to sin. The big problem is that we also tend to have blind spots. We may say “I don’t smoke and I don’t chew and I don’t date the girls that do.” – but what about less obvious sins? What about that which we allow our minds to dwell on, taking comfort in “well, at least I didn’t DO it!”. And what about those thoughts and attitudes that do not reflect the mind of Christ?
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