Having been in a lot of churches since 1991 I have noticed that the attitude or mind set of a church is what generally makes it or breaks it. How do you change the mindset of people who don't think they're the problem? How do you change the mindset of people who love drama? How do you implement change in these people who so that your church will grow.
It's a program I call baby steps for Jesus and it requires much patience to building these people in the faith. Hebrews 5:11-14 "We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand." Paul is dressing Christians who had stopped learning, who were falling away because they gave up or attitude of others drove them away.
The Hebrew writer goes ahead with those verses and writes "In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again." That is a sad commentary on a persons life who has been in the church and falls away. But what I find is unlearned people in the church are the reasons for it's down fall. I call these individual's kingdom killers because they spend their time creating drama instead of studying the word. When anything positive happens in the church they are the ones stomping out the fire with negative feedback. What's even more sad is they think they are doing a great service to God. Kind of like Paul thought when he was killing Christians. Paul describes their principle of operation for us in 1st Corinthians 3:1-3 (read this on your own). They bear no fruit, but they continually pluck the fruit from the tree of others. Eventually, the negative person or others will get tired of it and leave. To overcome these people is hard to reverse they take scripture out of context, and they refuse to grow. Hebrews 5:13 describes these people " Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness." The key word is infant and it describes a new born up to an age of accountability. Infants need parents to teach them how to grow up and mature. What I find in the church is those who don't want to grow and those who don't want to parent.
Here's the formula for motivating people to grow and its found in verse 14 "But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." It's time to engage these people into a deeper study of scripture even if it means a one on one meeting. Church drama is caused because people don't have the mindset of Christ, and the only way to get that mindset is to study.
Comments