What would the Church be like if...?

Over that last few weeks, God has taken me on a little Odyssey to continue to expand my vision of what it is that He wants to do through theGathering Fort Mill. The day to day events of my life and the challenges of the demands of our church finances, my personal finances, church activities, and a myriad of other "good things" can have the effect of drawing my gaze down, of having me look on things that are far too small and losing sight of the God whom we serve.

A friend of mine and I are reading a book together entitled "Transformation" by Bob Roberts. Roberts is a pastor and church planter in Texas, and shares his heart regarding the church in this book. I have found that at a number of places, I have truly resonated with Roberts, and have found his vision compelling and challenging. Pastor Roberts shares a portion of his story that he had been the planter of a successful church plant, that after some initial staggering growth, crashed and burned. This left him doing some serious soul searching and wondering what he needed to learn. He made a number of conclusions that I will list below, along with some scripture references that my friend has added to those statements. I would ask you to consider these statements and to look up the scripture, and begin to hear what God might have for you and for theGathering Fort Mill as a part of His Church:

• We have learned relevance and communication, but not transformation (Matt 15:7-9; Is 29:13; 2 Cor 3:18)
• We have learned purpose and functionality, but not essence and core DNA (John 4:23-24)
• We know so much of how, but so little of why (Prov 2:6; 2 Tim 3:1-7)
• We want to change the world, and we become managers of organizations (Mk 10:42-44)
• We make people more religious, but no different spiritually or culturally (Matt 23:13)
• We know what we believe, but we cannot live it (Rom 7:14-15)
• We think that we are respectable, but we have lost credibility (Hosea 5:5)
• We have become mass media market, not a movement to shake the world (Rev 3:1-3)

I would love to get your thoughts and feedback. How are we doing? Where have we fallen into these traps? Where have we done well?

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