A member of a particular church commented:
"the leaders at my church decided to do something about our declining attendance... so they devised a new-member campaign and urged all the members to bring a friend to church. It was all OK until I walked into the sanctuary on Sunday and saw the membership-progress 'thermometer'... positioned in front of, and obscuring, the cross"
Wow! what a powerful (while, I am sure, accidental) metaphor for what is wrong with so many churches!
You see, when we forget the one thing... when we forget it or we get it 'out of sync', we can end up 'obscuring the cross'...
I mentioned a few months back that I have a friend whose church decided they were going to get back to 'the 1 thing'...
So they purposefully, prayerfully decided to use the following 'filter' through which everything would be sifted:
Outward Focused at our Inner Core
The importance of everything, they said, would be judged by that creedo... every ministry, every budget line item, every Bible Class curriculum, every.... thing... would be compared with their 'outward focused' mantra... and if it did not measure up, it would be tossed aside.
What a revolutionary (for most churches) concept! How beautifully simple! How incredibly powerful and liberating!
May I suggest that we always keep the ONE thing in its proper place: at the very center of all we do!
Blessings!
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