Sunday, May 13, 2007
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| 0 to 60 one day a week!!! I have been doing a lot of yard work lately. Trying to get our little space reclaimed from all of the plants and bugs!!! Well, yesterday I rented a garden tiller. Not some small wimpy tiller, this was the Monster Truck of tillers! Marti left me to work on the yard while she took Trev to his baseball game. When she got home several hours later, I was crashed on the porch furniture (of course, I did get the tilling done). I told her I was completely worn out and sore from fighting the tiller all morning and from swinging the grubbing hoe so much. She said, "Well, hon, you just can't go from 0 to 60 one day a week. You have to take it easy at your age!"Well, I don't know what men "my age" should or should not do, but the 0 to 60 comment got me thinking.... We expect people to go from 0 to 60 in a lot of things, don't we? I think a lot of times we concentrate so hard on reaching people for Christ, and leading them to a point of doing business with God, and getting them baptized, so we can send numbers in to the SBC and say, "We are a growing church!" Then we throw them on to the Christian autobahn and tell them to drive before they get run over or ran off the road!!! Occasionally, when someone joins the church whom Michael and I have visited, I ask him if we get commission for that "closing". However, I think the joke may be on us instead. What happens when all you do is concentrate on conversions? Then, you reach a point where you want to have two Sunday School times, and you need twice the amount of teachers, and who is in the pool to choose from? A lot of spiritual babies who are still feeding on the milk of the Word, instead of being discipled on into the meat of deeper doctrines.I think the programs are there. We have Sunday night bible study cycles - and that is exactly what they are - discipleship. I also like the Sunday School setting. That is a lot more personal atmosphere where people can ask their questions, and learn how to put their Christianity into practice. That is, as long as the material is presented in a way that reaches the "babies" as well as the "meat eaters". I have heard a lot of people with no biblical background say that they are totally lost in Sunday School, because teachers assume they know the setting, or the story, or teaching that is being discussed.But are we doing enough? Are we as churches producing mature Christians that can go out and lead more people to Christ? I don't think we are cranking out mature Christians at the same rate that we are accepting new people into the Fellowship. I wonder sometimes if we shouldn't adopt some kind of Paul and Timothy type discipleship program where all new believers and even transfers of letter are appointed a more mature Christian in the church to disciple them. It would keep new members and believers from splashing around in the pool wondering what to do and where to go. It would also be a type of accountability for the more mature believers. That "Timothy" would expect to see you at each service, they would expect to hear what new words you had heard from the Lord this week - and if you are not spending TIME with the Lord, then you ain't hearing no new words! I don't know. I just look around at some of the people in our church that never open their mouths at all - even in a small group of believers - when they are asked their thoughts on a subject. Can that be because they don't HAVE any thoughts? LOL I hope not. But I wonder sometimes if they are so insecure in what they believe that they think they will embarrass themselves if they open thier mouths? How long will they feel like that? What are we doing to change that? What are THEY doing to change that? Whose responsibility is it to dislodge them from that point, so that they can continue their discipleship? Like I said - I don't know. I just got to thinking about all of this today and decided to blog. Like Marti said, it is therapy for me to sit down and write. It clears my foggy head!!! |
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