| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “Be smart, be strategic” Our Bible verse for today: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” Acts 2:42 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Simple is smart” I love the picture of the early church given to us in Acts 2:42. It was beautiful in its simplicity. They were focused on just a few important things such as discipleship, fellowship, and prayer. In other places in the early chapters of Acts we find that they also joined together in ministries of compassion and mercy, and there was lots of evangelism going on. But overall, their church life was clean and simple, focused on a handful of essentials. In their book “Simple Church” Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger report that as they studied highly effective churches of all sizes, they discovered that the most effective churches with the healthiest church life were the ones that had clearly identified their calling from God for the kind of church they were supposed to be. Then they then tailored their model of ministry to that calling. Those ministry models tended to be simple, in that they included ministry activities that were truly needed, and they also excluded any activities that were not really needed. This is important. Over time churches tend to become institutionalized and rigid. Programs and activities tend to become sacred cows that can’t be touched. If the suggestion is made that maybe a program or activity is no longer needed, sometimes we begin to hear protests like, “But we’ve always offered that activity.” or, “But churches are supposed to have a (fill in the blank) program.” No church can do everything, and no church can be all things to all people. If you try to, you may end up doing a lot of things poorly rather than a few things well. Also, when there’s too much going on at once it can be overwhelming for people, and they can end up exhausted from the pressure to participate in everything. There’s a lot to be said for “simple church”. Church life doesn’t have to be complicated. It shouldn’t be. Life is complicated, church doesn’t have to be. We’ll think more about this tomorrow. God bless, Pastor Jim |
| Copyright © 2022 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved. |
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Oak Hill Baptist Church 