Subject: Which Church is the right one? |
Bible Note: CDBJ This is not to be critical of your church in any way. However I can't stop thinking how many neighborhood churches you could build for that amount of money. How many local churches you have enough pastors to place. How much money could be saved not having to contend with things like traffic control, buying land for large parking lots and such. I would guess there are people attending that church that drive as much as 20-30 miles to get there. Are they really plugged in? Or do they attend and drive back home not having any meaningful relationship with others attending the same church. Is bigger better? I once read a magazine called "In Fisherman". In that magazine the editor always asked the same question. Is bigger better? His contention was we should look to nature. If bigger was better we would have 3 foot butterflies. I always think of that when I see big churches. Are they what Jesus intended or have we fallen for what the world tells us, we must be bigger? I had a professor in college that I will never forget. He had five PhDs from places like Sanford and such. He had pastored a church in California. As he talked I got the feeling the church wasn't very big, so I asked. He said it was about 230 people. I kind of thought he was never very successful as a pastor. Later in the year he began to tell about the work of the church. They has started 13 other churches and between them, they totally and fully supported 18 missionary families. Each of these other 13 churches were about 100-250 in size. And many of these had started churches like they were started. Instead of having a church with a huge staff they had 13 churches that had pastors and music ministers, youth pastor, children’s pastors, Sunday school superintendents, and praise and worship singers in each. The church weren’t as big but they had a greater number of people involved, being raised up, taking their place in the body of Christ. None of the churches were so large that they were a problem to the community (traffic, zoning, lost of tax money, people not wanting to live by such a big church), each filled a need in the neighbor hood because they were part of that neighborhood. People could walk to church, children could go there for after school activities, Bible school, the neighborhood knew the pastors. I had to quickly change my opinion of his successfulness and how I viewed success. EdB |