Relying for Growth

This week we return to the NEXT sermon series.  This is where we talk about what God is calling us to pursue as a church. This week we will talk about the first one: By December 31, 2020 we will be a church of 300+ people.  It is undoubtedly a big goal.
 
Why such a big goal?   Why not choose something more manageable?  For instance something like “5% growth per year.”  or “We will add 2 families each year?”  Why not a goal that seems more realistic? There are a lot of reasons.  Those goals (5% or 2 families a year) certainly seem reasonable.  At one level when you get right down to it the reason we don’t pursue them is because I don’t believe God is calling us to them.  But there is a second reason why not. They have a fatal flaw.  We could achieve them on our own.
 
When did Jesus ever call his followers to something so mundane?  Always he seemed to be calling them to something that seemed impossible.  We do not want to be the church that achieved some goal out of our own cleverness.   We don’t want to be the church that somehow maximized our structure, program, or fancy marketing so that we achieved what we had set out to achieve.  Make no mistake those efforts have their place and our motto needs to be what Paul exclaimed “by all possible means I might save some.”  But the goal we have set out for will require more than what human efforts might realistically achieve.
 
What we will need and ,in fact, the only reason we will reach this goal, is a movement of God in us, in our church, and in the people He brings to our church.  We will only reach this goal as we learn to radically rely on God to achieve it, in and through us.  Ultimately it will be Him not us that grows our church.  Just as the Psalmist rightly observes “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.”  But also please note, it is not an either/or.  There are still builders.
 
So this week we talk about how we can respond to the invitation to join him in the building.  We will look at how we can radically rely on Him and still be doing our part to grow our church.
 
See you there!
 
Pastor Chris