How would you know, whether a church has all that you're looking for in a church, unless it has that identity described in a website or in any digital face? And the word "growth" has been used to refer to the new believers added to the church. What is wrong in promoting a church if it saves a lot of souls and brings them to Christ?
I am not sure many here may have heard of Leonard Ravenhill, a wonderfully sweet but very cut-to-the-chase English preacher who now has gone on to be with the Lord.
I liked what he said.
“You never have to advertise a fire.”
It can be 3 in the morning, The street will still be crowded. If we advertise OUR church, rather than lift up Jesus Himself, whose eyes are the people on?
If we would seek God’s face to the point that those in our churches GLOWED, and people in the every day life of those glowing saints saw there joy and spiritual fruit and wanted that same walk, do you think the church would have any trouble growing?
Like produces like. Oh, we can build our church up by advertising using the world’s thinking, but Sunday-go-to-church Christians will simply fill our churches with more of the same, and the pastors, because they themselves do not glow, have no food to get others to glow. Thus, the church grows but it is now a business, and the pastor a CEO.
He is so busy with committees, programs, church problems, ministers conferences and the plans for “his” church to become bigger, that his time seeking God’s face grows less and less. Building programs are far more now the emphasis and the added pressure of needing more money from the languishing sheep to pay for those bigger buildings to hold more languishing sheep robs them of their own peace and joy.
In the early church, the leaders simply preached Jesus and Him crucified. They lived what they preached, and gave themselves continually to prayer and ministry of the Word. Nothing else as a pastor mattered. Evangelism and growth of the saints into holiness and fruit bearing was the emphasis. As a result? Glowing saints, who attracted others who wanted to glow.
Do we even see how far we have drifted? Do we actually possess the answers for those in darkness struggling to get free of it? If we cannot overcome our “minor sins (if there is such a thing), what spiritual counsel can we possibly offer the drug addict, the alcoholic, the man struggling with sexual impurity? We do not need to grow. We need to hit our knees.
Our lives are our true advertisement. If they do not lift up Jesus, if we are not passionate for Jesus Himself, we can, using the world’s technique, fill our buildings, but we must realize that they will be just like us, talking a lot “about” Jesus, but with little if any passion to talk to Him, or be like Him.
Blessings,
Gideon