Disturbing trends.  I was thinking of this yesterday,  that I notice some disturbing trends when it comes to writing concerning church leadership and church growth.  I pastor a smaller church, if we hit 70 that is a good Sunday for us.  I do not believe there is anything necessarily wrong with a small church. However, I do believe there is a lot wrong with a small church that fails to attempt to reach the lost.  That is for another post.

Here is the trend that I see cropping up in writings today.  Identifying a problem or problems without a solution.   I scour though blog posts, read books, talk to people, etc. and it seems like we are very good at identifying the problem. We can find things like 5 reasons you church sucks, but there are very little solutions to these problems.  Is this what I really want to fill my mind with all the reasons why my church won’t grow, can’t grow, what is wrong with my church etc. without ever getting a solution?  NO!  This is not what I want to read yet this is what seems to be popular these days.  Well thank you captain obvious.   Furthermore, those that seem to give a solution want to somehow either compromise the gospel, or somehow pretend like man is the ultimate decider of salvation so we must have some sort of atmosphere to manipulate man to make a decision for Christ.  I am sure you have read these kinds of things.  We need the lighting just right, and the parking lot just right, and the color of the walls of the sanctuary just right.  Not that I am opposed to ding things with excellence you can ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you that I want things done well.

We should never manipulate someone into making a decision for Christ.  Let me rephrase that we should never manipulate someone into making a “true” decision for Christ. What about the pastor that wants to lead his church to share the gospel with the lost in his community.  Where are the solutions.  Just stop with all of the blog posts, books, and other garbage that fills our minds with problems and never gives a solution.  

This leads me to a secondary trend.  This trend deals with church planting.  I am not a church planter nor do I know all of the ins and outs of church planting, however I have read through the ultimate church planting guide, which is the life of the Apostle Paul.  It seems the strategy of today for planting a church is a “better church”.  Is that really what we need a “better church”?  Come to “better church” because ours is better than yours.  Oh sure we may not have that slogan but that indeed is the mentality.   If we look at the life of Paul is this how the church grew or did it grow because depraved sinners came to Christ.   If I plant a church that is running 200 in 5 years then the church should have close to 200 decisions for salvation.  However this is not the case in many circumstances.  Church plants  should grow because they are winning the lost to Christ not because they have a “better Church”  or they just know how to do church better.  We have made church a business, a store that tries as hard as it can to gain customers.  Those may be new customers to our store but they are not new customers if you know what I mean.   All of this is to say lets reach the lost.  I don’t need more problems we need to reach the lost.  We don’t need a church plant that is not reaching the lost we need to reach the lost.  How about some solutions on how to modify our people to take the gospel to those in our community.  Why can’t we take our cities by storm. our states, our nation, and other nations by storm with the gospel.  Well because we are so focussed on the problem we don’t even see a solution. Just the rambling of some small church pastor.