Arranging our Lives for Transformation

 

I've been in full-time ministry for the past 30 years and 18 of those years have been church ministry. One thing I've discovered in church ministry is that we are program-driven. 

Churches love to have lots of different things going on for our families and success is measured by how many programs are happening and how many people attend those programs. There is Sunday School, children's church, outreach events, Bible studies and on and on. 

Then Covid-19 hit and things came to a screeching halt. No more programs, no more activity, no unending busyness. And I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

The more I reflect and pray about things, the more I'm convinced that the church has got it all wrong. We've replaced devotion with duty, adoration with activity, worship with a wealth of programming. And it has produced a bunch of burned-out Christians who don't want to do anything.

Perhaps what God desires is for families to come together to worship Him. To grow in their walk. To go OUT to do ministry. For their talk to become their walk. And yes, some programming is helpful to achieve those things but somehow I think we've gone over the top with it.

Do we really need one more Bible study? Shouldn't people  pick up their Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to begin to give them insight? Or do we somehow think that God is incapable of revealing truth? 

Do families need one more activity that pulls them apart? Or do parents need to lead by example? Shouldn't families be worshipping together instead of going off their own separate way? Shouldn't the church learn that it's okay if children make a bit of noise in the service?

There are no easy answers to any of these questions. I've been mulling these things over lately as I plan our own church's programming. I often mistakenly fall into the trap that a full church calendar = success. But really all that means is that I'm so busy that there is no time for hearing from the Lord. 

But I do know that what is needed by most of us is a bit of slowing things down. We need spiritual transformation that will only happen as we learn to get rid of much of the distraction. What we need is less programming and more of God.

There is a quote by Ruth Haley Barton that has resonated with me lately. "Many of us try to shove spiritual transformation into the nooks and crannies of a life that is already unmanageable, rather than being willing to arrange our life for what our heart most wants. We think that somehow we will fall into transformation by accident."

May we all learn to quiet ourselves, tune out the distractions and arrange our lives for transformation.