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TO GROW THE CHURCH WE MUST SHRINK THE CHURCH

Michie

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In other words, Church leaders, stop being businessmen and start being loving Fathers. Stop basing your decisions on the short-term “bottom line,” and start being the “good dads” you were called to be, treating “each one of you as a father treats his children, exhorting and encouraging you and insisting that you walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his Kingdom and glory.” (1 Thes. 11-12, from today’s first reading).

Souls have plenty of “businesses” to choose from. No, they want a “family bond” to dedicate themselves to. They want parents who love them. They don’t want to be treated as “customers being attracted to a product.”

Yes, if our Church leaders start being firm and loving dads, in the short term, many may leave. Realize this happened to Jesus. In the Bread of Life Discourse (John 6), many of his disciples complained that this was all too hard. And, in John 6:66 (666 is the number of the beast … IOWs, the number of those who abandon their call as children of God), it reads, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” (John 6:66)

Continued below.
 

fide

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I guess that title was attractive because it is counter-intuitive, but I disagree with the logic, or the precondition, that the Church must first shrink and then it could grow. The problem is not that the Church is too big; the problem is that the Church is too worldly and is peaceful in that worldliness. In other worlds, we have fallen into "another gospel" - one that is comfortable and even happy with a compromised gospel - one that believes that God and Mammon can live in happy separate but equal reigns with one another. Two altars on which to make offerings; two gods to love; two kings to serve; dual citizenships in two kingdoms.

To Grow the Church we must shrink the world within. "He must increase; I must decrease" of John the Baptist: out of context, but it could apply very well here anyway.
 
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