Well, it is charge conference season again. Any long standing member of the United Methodist Church (or for that matter, of any Methodist Church) knows exactly what I mean. It’s a time of filling out forms and finding people to fill positions in the sometimes uncontrollable government of our denomination. Oh, I yearn for a church that would put as much effort into making disciples for Jesus Christ as we put into perpetuating this necessary evil! Why is it we labor over these positions (many of which are unnecessary for some churches) and neglect the command of our Savior to be his witness? Why is it we want our form of government to be proper, but pay no attention to our form of spirituality? There is something fundamentally wrong with a church whose focus is on the business of the church rather than the Savior of creation. Yes, I know we don’t worship the government of our church (at least most don’t), and I realize we must have order…of all people I love order and take heart in the fact we serve a God of order. But the energy we expend that could be directed to the lost and hurting...oh well, soon enough we will be through another charge conference season, praise God!
3 comments:
You have a point. Organization is good and there needs to be a foundation on which to build. An issue is that it's a whole lot easier to file a position and monitor if the work is being done, that to measure how effective we are at winning people to Christ. Who knows where, when or how that seed is planted? (God does) OR when it will germinate and produce results? Unfortunately, we can't see the results of our planting many times, so are we being effective??? We just need to trust that God will use us and be open for His leading.
Amen, it's all about trust!
Just like I told Chuck after we mudded in the seeds and plants in our garden this past spring, God does the growing. And He blessed us and continues to bless us. We really don't know what seeds we are planting today that will grow in the future. Maybe some of those seeds are planted around those tables in a committee meeting in preparation for our charge conference.
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