Vitality in the Local Church

As I was sitting down to a piece of homemade chocolate cake the other night, I ran across and article reminding me that I needed to put down the cake, slim down, exercise more, and do more eating right and generally be a better person. And the writer was correct. I need to do those things.

Amazingly, that was not the force of this particular article. It was more about church health and what kinds of things a pastor was deriding in local churches, to shut them down. And I'll be honest, there have been times when I have made some of the same statements. So I needed not only to hear the "put down the cake" lesson, but also the deeper lesson of transformed churches.

The keys the author pointed to were:

-Some healthy churches need to go through decline and financial hardship to come to grips with life as it is currently. St. Andrew -Check

-For both new and old churches the primary issue is "Leadership and Vision" (I would add to that a statement that says it must extend beyond the clergy of the church, and a few select "leaders") St. Andrew - Check

-A challenge of Discipleship must be laid out and taken up with the membership, "raising rather than lowering the bar". St. Andrew -Check

And if you think (as you well should) that you need to check the facts of my edits, then go right ahead. Click here

HT: DD