Well it has been a little while since I have had the chance to write something out on here and so here I sit in the "office" of my new place in North Battleford, SK (which is really the spare bedroom but I don't have a bed for it yet so it will remain the office for now). I started officially working at the church yesterday and found myself running out of time already, oh the life of a pastor I suppose. Today, however, was a different story. A bunch of the church leadership went into Saskatoon for Willow Creek's annual Leadership Summit, one of the churches in Stoon is a satellite host, the things you can do with technology these days.
Anyway, one of the speakers today (we're going back again tomorrow and saturday) talked a little about what we should expect of God as ministry leaders and how a lot just settle in their little comfortable lives and don't really think anything else will happen, and of course if you don't think it will and don't act in faith, what are the chances that God will honor that? Pretty good actually, I think He'll honor your lack of faith with the results that you deserve which turns out to be a whole lot of nothing. Now of course, God can choose to do whatever He wants and if He chooses to bless a ministry in spite of a leader or the congregants, that's cool, but I"m not sure it happens as often as we might wish.
Essentially what I was made to think of consequently is the fact that I don't just want to settle, I want to dream big and expect big things from God, why shouldn't I? After all He is the creator of the universe, you know, all powerful and all knowing, He can do huge things. But why should I expect something like that if I'm not willing to obey and push forward?
I look at this new ministry opportunity in which I have been so graciously placed and I see huge potential for some incredible God stuff to continue to happen. I don't know much of this place, I don't know much of anything really, but I'm finding that I have pretty strong confidence that God can do things beyond the limits what we generally place on Him. It's not a big city by any means, but why can't we have the largest church in Canada in this small city? There's no reason for me not to think it possible, especially if I'm leaving the real work to God. Something that I found much comfort in today was the sense that I actually believe God can do something huge in this city, I just need to act on that faith and tell other people about it and hopefully they can grab that vision. Why can't we have a church of 2 or 3,000 or more in a city of 14,000? There's no reason why not, unless all we all do is just settle for what we got.
God brought me to a conclusion today, that is that I don't wanna settle. I don't want to just accept that a small city has churches under 1,000 people and that's just the way it is, I don't want to settle for the daily grind, I don't want to settle for being a pessimist, I don't want to settle for a spouse just because I want to get married. I want to keep on walking, keep on looking, persue an incredible woman with passion and huge faith to spend my life with, I want to expect God to do huge things in this place and in my life, so I'm going to start doing those things. If it requires some waiting, that's fine, being impatient doesn't make the time pass by faster, or make the line grow shorter in a quicker time, it's all paced out in God's timing.
So faith without deeds is dead, I don't want that to be my faith.
3 comments:
Just out of curiousity, and only because this is the first time in a while I've heard a Christian talk that way, are you saying that success is only shown through in a church over the size of 1000 people?
It's been my personal reflection that a successful church should never ever even reach the size of 1000. It should have branched and spawned new sister churches and plants long before then. That way growth is constantly being obtained through the strength that was blessed from the initial church.
By the way, it's Gregg from the Ol' Sheridan Park. It's awesome to see that you're pastoring man! Congrats.
Just wanted to clarify, I do not in fact think the numbers in a church necessarily reflect successful ministry. The idea has much more to do with the seeming restraints that our own faith has when it comes to what God can do in smaller communities than it has to do with numbers. We get in our minds that since it's a small town or smaller city that the potential for growth is somehow vastly limited. Now of course some places just can't be supplied with huge congregations, but what ever happened to the verse "anything is possible with God"?
I agree that big numbers are not the key but size does matter! But it's the size of our God that matters. We must never limit our God, if we do our view of God needs to be blown up and reformed. Blessings on you Troy as you pursue all that God has for you in your time up in N.B. later.
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