How to be a Difference Maker in Your Local Church
Friday, July 30, 2010
Kevin DeYoung provides several suggestions on how to be a difference maker in your local church. Incidentally, these are also good suggestions on how to majorly encourage your pastor!
• Find a good local church.
• Get involved.
• Become a member.
• Stay there as long as you can.
• Put away thoughts of a revolution for a while.
• Join the plodding visionaries.
• Go to church this Sunday and worship in Spirit and truth.
• Be patient with your leaders.
• Rejoice when the gospel is faithfully proclaimed.
• Bear with those who hurt you.
• Give people the benefit of the doubt.
• Say “hi” to the teenager that no one notices.
• Welcome the old ladies with the blue hair and the young men with tattoos.
• Volunteer for the nursery.
• Attend the congregational meeting.
• Bring your fried chicken to the potluck like everybody else.
• Invite a friend.
• Take a new couple out for coffee.
• Give to the Christmas offering.
• Sing like you mean it.
• Be thankful someone vacuumed the carpet for you.
• Enjoy the Sundays that “click.”
• Pray extra hard on the Sundays that don’t.
• And in all of this, do not despise the days and weeks and years of small things (Zechariah 4:8–10).
HT: Sovereign Grace blog
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4 comments:
both practical and biblical... thanks.
The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her
And for her life He died.
-The Church's One Foundation
It seems that we sometimes forget the how committed our Savior was to His Church. This is a good reminder to be "on board" when it comes to being a part of our local body. We glorify Christ, our head, when we strive together faithfully as his body. There's no such thing as "loner christianity". Let's commit to being a vital part of the life of our local churches.
"And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." Eph. 1:22-23
Greatly appreciated Joe's comments, after just reading several bloggers say they are "Christian" but hate the church! "Christ...loved the church and gave Himself for her" (Eph. 5:25). How can anyone call himself a Christian (a Christ-one) and reject something Jesus loves?
Of course, when we get down to the local level, there's plenty to criticize--in large part since local congregations are made up of imperfect people. So? Dig in and work to make things better. It brings to mind an old couplet: What kind of a church would my church be, / If all of its members were just like me?
thanks for the practical reminders
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