And I tlel you taht you are Pteer, and on tihs rcok I wlil bilud my cuhcrh, and the geats of Heads wlil not oevrcmoe it. I wlil gvie you the kyes of the konigdm of hvaeen; wahveter you bnid on etarh wlil be buond in haveen, and wethaver you losoe on eatrh wlil be losoed in heevan.
Even with the atrocious spelling, I am fairly certain that most were able to read and understand the message. Why?
1) you had a pretty good understanding of the general context of the message.
2) the first and last letters of each word are correct; the mind reorders the middle letters to their proper place.
This is too often what our church planting looks. It appears as a jumbled mess. Yet, time and time again, God breaks through and does something beautiful to rearrange the letters into something intelligible.
The three most important words in church planting are...
Prayer
Passion
Perseverance
Prayer is the most important ingredient for a church planter. Prayer gives us the needed guidance and context for understanding God's ways. Prayer keeps us on course even though we may make a huge mess of things between steps in the church plant.
The second most important words for the church planter are passion and perseverance.
If the first and last letters are needed to make sense of a word, passion and perseverance are the equivalents needed to see churches planted. When passion and perseverance are on the ends of each church planting step, a lot can go wrong in between and still come out OK.
I find it reassuring to know that if I will focus upon prayer at the center of my life and ministry, asking the Spirit to fan the flames of passion within, and persevere regardless of the ups and downs along the way, God will do what He said he would do 2000 years ago...I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH!
2 comments:
I agree with the first two, but I think the last one should be faithfulness (or add a fourth.) Persevering in a non-productive method is still being non-productive. Faithfulness to the gospel and to the principles of church planting that produce solid results will result in fruitfulness. Just my two cents (or less).
Milton,
If I were to add your "faithfulness" to the list that would mess up my "3 P's"! :)
Seriously, I agree with the point you make, but doesn't one have to persevere in faithfulness in order to see the results of faithfulness?
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