Love is what makes a Christian community grow—people are attracted to it. They gravitate to the fellowship, to the teaching of the Word, to the worship of God, and to the community that all this necessarily engenders. But precisely because love makes a community grow, so also a community growing makes love harder. It is much easier to maintain tight communion in a church of 100 people than in a church of 800 people. And then if you go to two services, it is harder to do what used to be so easy to do.
People are attracted to a good thing, which makes it harder to keep it a good thing. A cabin by a pristine lake is a good thing, and it would remain a good thing if there were a second cabin. The only trouble is, 150 people want to build the second cabin.
As a church community grows, and loving one another gets more challenging, it is easy to assume the worst. Things aren’t what they used to be. But these challenges are not necessarily signs of love fading, but are rather signs that God is requiring us to see our love grow up into maturity.
Another illustration can be seen in the task and duty we have to plant churches. Whenever you plant a church, or send out missionaries, or establish a new work, you are embracing a bittersweet privilege. There was an instance in the book of Acts when everyone was sad to see Paul go off . . . go off into the will of God. “And when we had accomplished those days, we departed and went our way; and they all brought us on our way, with wives and children, till we were out of the city: and we kneeled down on the shore, and prayed.” (Acts 21:5).
This is a design feature. As we think of planting multiple churches over the next generation, this is a truth we need to get down into our bones.
One time my wife was talking with someone about the challenges of children leaving home, and my wife said there is only one thing sadder than a son who grows up and leaves home, and that is a son who doesn’t.
I know I sound like a Luddite when I say it, but I’ve mused that the three worst inventions ever are electricity, cars and the telephone. Each has given us greater freedom to connect easily with those outside our immediate surroundings, and one result has been the near annihilation of communities. The problem isn’t with the technological advances we’ve made, but rather our lack of discipline in their use. In the admittedly mediocre movie “Star Trek: Insurrection”, our space travelers discover a people who have eschewed all their fancy gizmos, space travel and the like, because they realized they were… Read more »
I am sure there is good theology in ChristIan buildings to be found here, however most are ugly, temporary and are not the center of the community.
Large congregations will be tempted with control and the self serving need of maintaining the established programs. Training and planting seems like a better alternative, but that would mean giving up a piece of the action.
When Gene Edwards plants a church, he insists that everyone live within 2 minutes’ walk of one another so they can be part of one another’s lives.
Here in the Appalachian mountains, the geography of the place enforces that to a degree.
While one church may be a shorter distance away as the crow flies, it is farther away an a lot harder to get to when you have to climb a 1000′ ridge to get there. Most churches (Freewill baptist) are planted with ease of access and the fact that there are so many mountains and ridges enforces a need for many churches.
It is quite wonderful.
Hard on farmers and acreage owners. They wouldn’t be off their own properties after 2 minutes walk.
on an administrative note, An active discussion is underway on The Collapse of Their Righteousness, but the Disqus comments are not accessible.
Although they appear in the sidebar over there–>
One cannot get to them from here https://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/the-collapse-of-their-righteousness.html#comment-2197293505
Is there a way to extend the life of active commenting?
thx
That is strange. I replied about an hour ago to both of Mark’s replies and now they don’t show on that page, only his replies in my notifications page. If Pastor Doug sees this perhaps he can dig the recent comments out of some archive? If not, and is any interest, perhaps we could re-post them in a newer thread?
I think that the ability to comment from the blog “times out” after it is pushed back in time.
However, for existing conversations and notifications you can still converse with your interlocuter via the disqus interface.
However, nobody else can interject or access it.
very strange.
It is strange and frustrating after all our hard work :) However, I did figure out if one has a Disqus account and clicks on the person’s username above their comment on the sidebar…if the account isn’t privatized, then they can see the comment in full and then click “view in discussion” below the comment to still see the full thread. For happy example, I can click on Kelly M. Haggar above a comment responding to a deleted thread of comments and, even though the comments are gone from the blog itself, I can read what you said and access… Read more »
I puttered around with that but haven’t found a way to capture what I sent, only what people sent me. Tried The Wayback Machine but it doesn’t have very recent posts on this blog. Unless Pastor Doug has both the ability and interest to re-open a thread, I guess just have to save things we’re interested in as a Word or WP doc.