On The Road - Episode 2 - Numeric Growth Is Not The Primary Goal

God Centered Theology

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Welcome to On The Road and it is August 29th, 2024 the year of our

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Lord and it's this is the podcast that takes you from carpool to work every morning and so what's on my mind today?

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Well as one who is looking for a church to serve I scour and look at the veritable job descriptions quote -unquote that you can find online at different places that I look everything from church staffing to the local

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Baptist Convention website and all this good stuff and so I look at a lot of job quote -unquote job descriptions and postings and things like that and if you do it long enough and you know anything about the biblical nature of the church it'll make you abundantly sad and because somewhere along the line over the last few decades we have fallen victim to what

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I call the Americanized business form of the church. Many churches in fact pretty much your average

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Southern Baptist Church doesn't look really anything like the early church or what the

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Bible said the church should look like. It looks like a an Americanized form of business.

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It looks like what they're attempting to turn into a constitutional republic form representative government just like a you know bless

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God America we gotta make this church like America because you know people think because you're a member of the church that you know

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I remember one time somebody told me they asked you know what's the probably one of the most important things about being a church member and they waited and the first answer they got was well

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I guess because we can vote. I was like oh my god if the first thing you think about when you think about what it means to be a church member is that you can vote that is a big red flag that you are have problems that the level of biblical knowledge in your churches is abundantly low and none of this is said to be mean or in jest it's just it's a sad reality because we've turned our churches into this thing where we think the congregation is constituents and a voting block and you even have places that are really in trouble that will even look at that way and say well you know so -and -so with the money we gotta make sure they're happy so they'll vote a certain way or these people over here sit on this side and and they look at it you know we vote on our pastor and vote on our deacon so they work for us you know this idea that somehow you they you elect representatives and they're there to work for you go like bless

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God Merica that's how it works it's not the biblical model that's not what it's supposed to be you don't gain power by becoming a church member that's not that's not how this thing works the congregation if you're not a deacon or a pastor if you're just simply a church member your primary role is to well once you get past the main things worship

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God obey God love Lord your God all your heart soul mind and strength all that good stuff but in the church specifically it is to discover develop and utilize your gifts to edify and build up the other church members and it is to do the work of ministry

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Ephesians 4 deals with this when it talks about how the elders and the pastors are there to build up the body for the work of ministry to instruct them and teach them and disciple them to do the work of ministry it's not so that they can be in charge and have voting rights to get what they want and there's sadly some churches they'll have you know a committee for everything a personnel committee and this committee because you've got to keep them pastors in line and you know they look at deacons as boards of authority at all it's just it's so sad you're not electing

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CEO you're not electing or calling a an employee to do your bidding now look are there bad pastors are there pastors that abuse their authority or their pastors that see it and think they're high and mighty and and this that yeah and that that needs to be deal with as most but one of the things you see when this discussion happens people for some reason think if you're talking about what should be if they can point to well you know pastors do this sometimes that somehow that like the two wrongs make a right it's like well that negates anything you could say about you know how the church should run because you know if you do that and you'll be pastors that do this that that are like well first of all if they're abusing their power and they're acting simply like that they're disqualified and not a true elder second of all just because that happens doesn't mean

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God hasn't said what he has said about how he expects his church to run so when

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I look at these job descriptions quote -unquote it just makes me sad because I saw one yesterday and it's like it almost

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I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of seven or eight out of ten will say this we want our church to grow we're we want to be a growing congregation we want to grow numerically we want to see more people coming it's like the whole tone and thrust of the job description quote -unquote is centered around bringing in somebody that they call pastor that's simply there to be a motivational speaker that can be engaging entertaining whatever suppurative you want to throw on it that will entice more people to come into the building that's not the biblical model that's not what we're there to do now it's funny because you could always spot emotional and mental and spiritual immaturity by based on people respond to stuff you say that the first thing you hear like yes cuz clearly that's what

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I said no yes we we want to we would love to see you know more people come and this that the other and that's all fine well and good however that's not the primary goal so used to I would just send my resume to everybody now a little bit you know having been through what

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I went through at the first church I see red flags quicker and easier more quickly and easily and so I don't send my resume to some place and then if it in the first sentence or two of your quote -unquote job description you say something about you know we want somebody to come and help us grow

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I don't even send my resume to you cuz you just told me a lot about you cuz numeric growth is not necessarily a good thing in the church you say how dare he say that numeric growth is good and you know the more people the more people that can give money to pay your salary like if an elder that's there and they're worried about more people being there to pay quote -unquote pay his salary that is a bad sign and I even had somebody tell me one time to my face in a meeting you know we pay your salary

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I look right back at him I said no you don't I'm not an employee I work for God just like you work for God as a church member now your role in working for God looks different than mine in some cases in some respects but I don't work for man

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I work for God it just so happens that a church compensates me for the amount of time I put in I said now if this is gonna be an issue you can you can figure up and total up every penny you've ever paid me and I'll come up with some kind of payment plan

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I'll pay church back and I'll go out and get a job and we'll solve this issue right now and that's one of the things

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I can say with absolute certainty is I have never nor am I now nor I ever be controlled by money

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I can guarantee you that nobody's ever gonna manipulate me or control me of money and be like well you know

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I pay your salary or this that the other therefore you have to like yeah if especially the church if the only thing you should do the only thing you have to do is what scripture says and if it goes against scripture guess what we go with scripture and not what you said so yeah numeric growth is not necessarily a good thing why well because it let's say you have a hundred people in your church and 50 new people show up tomorrow and they're all goats they're unconverted okay well let's say they claim to have professional faith you put them on the rolls and now they can vote they have power oh well now they're on committees and now they're on this and that and you've got a big problem there you know it's not you know if growth numerically happens in a church it's because God intended for it to happen

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God owns the church he controls the church he's sovereign of the church now

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I believe he will send his people to places that are healthy where they can be ministered to and be discipled and make disciples and all the things that you're supposed to be worried about and that will yes result in some numeric growth but that's if your main goal is numeric growth whether you intend to or not you're going to model a lot of your decision -making after that primary goal you say oh no well well the dying church

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I was in I hurts that all I heard all the time for reasons to do or not do something well you know if we do that or say that people may leave people may not like it they may go in the community and talk about it and then we wanted people here or we need to do this food thing or this thing because that'll get people to come if your people if your church has more people show up to an event that has food or something with dealing with kids you've probably got some underlying reasons there that doesn't mean it isn't in those things aren't enjoyable or part of what we do that's usually a bad sign because if you you're gonna do that they're gonna base everything off of you know what will make us have more people that that's not the goal having more people for whatever reason whether it's have more money or whatever that that's not what we're there for we're there to make disciples be discipled and use our spiritual growth our spiritual gifts to edify and build up the body to make it stronger biblically mentally physically in every aspect spiritually we're there to do that and we do this not just so that we can live more obediently and live more holy and worship

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God more holy in a more righteous way but so that it will make us more effective in evangelism and more effective at how we live in the world and so on so forth and as you do that and have a healthy place for Christians to come and experience this

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I believe in a lot of cases God will send more people to you and this doesn't mean that it's not proper to invite people to church or you know if somebody moves to town let them know where you're at or you know have a level of advertising and marketing like having a website there's there's marketing involved and letting people know who you are and let them know you're there and the worst thing could happen is never advertise anything and nobody knows you even exist but what

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I'm saying is those are elements of things that you do but they're not the primary reason you're there so that's why

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I say you don't if I read a quote -unquote job description that says you know where we want somebody to come and help us grow well you you're demonstrating a clear lack of understanding of what the elders is there for the church is to be overseen by plurality a plurality of biblically qualified elders slash pastors this is why also it would be better in most cases if our elders had outside employment where they're by vocational in a sense that they have their means taken care of and don't have to rely so much on the compensation from the church now

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I think if a pastor spends the bulk of his time at the church and is compensated on what we would call a quote -unquote full -time manner that shouldn't be weaponized against him to manipulate or control him it should be seen as gracious compensation for the work that he's putting in and shouldn't be used as a manner of control but I do see where it could be better if we had elders that had their means taken care outside the church so you sort of remove that possibility of anybody trying to use or weaponize that against them now you know obviously

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I would love to be full -time and be compensated so I could relax and focus on the work and there's nothing inherently wrong with that all

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I'm saying is in some cases it might would be better and so that that's sort of the thing

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I see that I cringe a little bit because it's like ooh like I wonder what's going on that that building so anytime

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I see a quote -unquote job description that talks about the proper things first I race to send my resume there because it's like y 'all sound like you got your your ducks in a row over here so you know anyway

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I could say a lot more but my my drive has ended I'm here it's time to do what