"Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’[a] If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. (John 15:20 NIV)
Full confession moment: One of my pet peeves are the never-ending lists that tell the church, and most noticeably church pastors and leaders, what they are doing wrong and how to fix it. While I'm sure many of these are well-intentioned, they often come off a people looking for popularity and readers at the expense of the church. They often also ignore the fact the pastoring a church, or being a church leader is hard. Not every chuch can be turned around with your five, or ten suggestions. I also note many of these are written by people who are not clergy or have never been a church leader (I'm looking at you Rachel Held Evans). I've just never seen the percentage in bashing the Body of Christ.
So I begin this with a little trepidation today that I not fall into that mix. Don't worry, I'm not going to drop my top 10 sure-fred church fixer ideas at you. It's merely my attempt to explain my statement, I really don't care for most TV preachers. In fact I almost never watch them. From time to time I've been asked which ones do I watch and which one's do I like. The answer, is honestly, none of …show more content…
I don't think your happiness is His first priority either. At least if we abide by our culture's definition of happiness equaling comfort.First of all we are terrible judges on what will make us happy in the first place. How many of our poor decisions began with "It seemed like a good idea at the time". Secondly there is a lot of spiritual growth we will not experience if our only goal is to be happy. Just before the passage above, Jesus specifically says God prunes us back in order that we might bear fruit. Spiritual formation isn't always easy and it might not always make us
Full confession moment: One of my pet peeves are the never-ending lists that tell the church, and most noticeably church pastors and leaders, what they are doing wrong and how to fix it. While I'm sure many of these are well-intentioned, they often come off a people looking for popularity and readers at the expense of the church. They often also ignore the fact the pastoring a church, or being a church leader is hard. Not every chuch can be turned around with your five, or ten suggestions. I also note many of these are written by people who are not clergy or have never been a church leader (I'm looking at you Rachel Held Evans). I've just never seen the percentage in bashing the Body of Christ.
So I begin this with a little trepidation today that I not fall into that mix. Don't worry, I'm not going to drop my top 10 sure-fred church fixer ideas at you. It's merely my attempt to explain my statement, I really don't care for most TV preachers. In fact I almost never watch them. From time to time I've been asked which ones do I watch and which one's do I like. The answer, is honestly, none of …show more content…
I don't think your happiness is His first priority either. At least if we abide by our culture's definition of happiness equaling comfort.First of all we are terrible judges on what will make us happy in the first place. How many of our poor decisions began with "It seemed like a good idea at the time". Secondly there is a lot of spiritual growth we will not experience if our only goal is to be happy. Just before the passage above, Jesus specifically says God prunes us back in order that we might bear fruit. Spiritual formation isn't always easy and it might not always make us