Growth

This may be a little too 'administirial' for my reflections, but it's what I was thinking today, so....

It dawned on me after Greek IMPACT last night why so many churches, small groups, youth groups and college ministries struggle with growth. Why so many of them DON'T grow, and are content with remaining the same size they've always been. For the first time this year at GI - I don't know a good number of the folks that are coming in our door every week. We are regularly seeing between 45-60 folks at our meetings this year and with a good number of them being freshmen and sophomores it's just hard to do.

It's wierd, though, walking around 'your' meeting for 'your' organization and not knowing your audience (perhaps part of our problem is indeed that we think its 'ours'...). In fact, I can see how it would be intimidating and unfulfilling for people at times. Afterall, if we are honest with ourselves, isn't there something deep inside us (or right at the surface for many I fear) that wants to have a 'Cheers'-type ministry" "where everybody knows your name. And you're always glad you came"? At the heart of it, isn't this the problem?

Now some would say this is not a problem. Of course you want to be somewhere were everyone knows everyone and we all feel comfortable and challenged by one another. Of course I'd love it if Dave and Dusty and Kristen and Cassie and the other 10 or so seniors who graduated could come back and I could feel comfortable having a bunch of people I know and love around to affirm me and challenge me and love me.

BUT I think this is where we go seriously wrong. This is where we miss the gospel all together. And, I believe, this is where we kill the idea of religion or faith for anyone on the outside who would have any desire to see what God is up to.

It's like we live in the Acts 2:42-46:

They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of break and to prayer....All the believers were together and had everything in common....Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together....

But we forget to read Acts 2:47:

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

We love the idea of the disciples and how close they were to each other, but we forget about the thousands that they in turn led and spent time with.

We love the fact that Jesus tells us in the Great Commission that he is 'with you always,' but forget that he first told us to 'go into the world and preach the good news.'

In order to truly understand and live the gospel, I believe that our ministry groups, our small groups, our friendship groups and our churches HAVE to grow. We HAVE to be ok with growth, in fact I'd go as far as to say we are abusing the grace and the community God has given us if we DON'T play an active role in growing those places of our lives.
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Ok, off the soap box for today. Got the laptop back today - but they didn't bother to fix it at all. So it's going back to Dell (shocking) for actual repair this time. At least they knocked a hundred bucks off the thing.....