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Friday, December 9, 2016

Too many methods

There is no secret sauce to growing the church, keeping kids in the faith, bringing revival or changing culture. Solomon the Philosopher-King sagely observes that under the sun, on a long enough time scale, madness and folly are indistinguishable. Practical tips, new leadership tricks, and useful productivity shortcuts make work bearable, but there is no 'ultimate solution'. So often we Christians are tempted to say longer prayer meetings, or keepings kids in church, or specially targeting them outside the church service, educating them in the home or sending them as evangelists to public schools, or preaching with notes or without notes, or preaching directly from the Koine Greek, or street preaching or relational evangelism or having nine kids or singing modern songs or singing your own songs or having nicer buildings or bigger buildings, or voting for conservative politicians, or welcoming refugees, or being a nicer person or whatever it is, the list is nearly endless; will fix all our problems. The secret to bringing revival in the church is .....  But it won't, of the making of many methods there is no end. Relax, Jesus has set you free, look to the 'Parable of the Talents' and serve God with what he has allocated you. If you trust Jesus, then you are a character in his big story. This doesn't mean we can't have and share opinions, more of that I say, but don't feel burdened by the meritocracy of our age.

[Statue of Job at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. 'God in the midst of everything.']