Conflict is the Price of Growth

In my prep for this Sunday's morning service, I came across an interesting blurb by Mark Driscoll in his book entitled "Vintage Church."  It's definitely something I need to ponder, especially as it seems that Grace Community has seen some decent growth this past year.  He writes:

"When a church grows, it changes, and that change causes conflict.  Importantly, conflict is not always a bad thing in a church.  Conflict, if handled in love and humility according to the principles of Scripture, can and should be the impetus for a more mature church that is more unified than ever.  By way of analogy, every married couple knows that there is inevitably conflict in any loving relationship.  The question is, "Not will we ever have conflict?", but rather, "How will we deal with our conflict?"  Having been with my high school sweetheart for many years, I can attest to the fact that learning to work through our conflict has allowed us not to fear conflict but to use it as an occasion to build our loving unity by God's grace, and the same is true for my eleven years of service in our church.

"The price of your church growing so that more people are worshiping Jesus is conflict.  I am convinced that many churches refuse to grow, even building theological justifications for not growing, because they are afraid of conflict, which means that rather than worshiping Christ, they are worshiping comfort.  Simply, the desire to grow in numbers and maturity requires change, and change causes conflict.  Therefore, growing churches are the ones that are prone to experience the greatest seasons of division, as the following process illustrates:

     1. Growth causes change.
     2. Change causes complexity.
     3. Complexity causes chaos.
     4. Chaos causes concern.
     5. Concern causes conflict.

"This conflict comes in eight different forms.  With each form, a person or a faction of people want something that they perceive they lost due to a change.  They fight to preserve what they lost and in so doing oppose change.  Their efforts focus on gaining or regaining one of eight forms of church currency that they value."

Driscoll goes on to list that these eight currencies, which I am simply going to list, are:

     1. Power
     2. Remuneration/compensation
     3. Preference
     4. Information - newcomers have access to the same things veterans have 'earned' during the years
     5. Visibility - when gifted newcomers become visibly prominent, this often threatens the veterans
     6. Personal energy - more people requires more leadership and service
     7. Pace - veterans constantly pull the emergency brake because they fear loss of control
     8. Control

Driscoll concludes by saying:

"For a church to grow it must accept the pain that accompanies change.  Because we want more people to worship Jesus as God, we must be willing to accept the inevitable conflict that change brings.  Such change can be perceived by some as a loss of power, remuneration, preference, information, visibility, role, sustainable pacing, or control.  Or, it can be viewed as an opportunity to share those things with others for the sake of Jesus' gospel and his church."

Since this is already a lengthy blog post, I will save my theological musings for later posts.  Feel free to leave your comments, as I value them.  I am in agreement with Driscoll here, and so if he is out to lunch, then so am I. 

Jesus promised to build His church, not make it comfortable (something that actually kills it, well at least according to most of the NT letters).  May we pray that His kingdom come, not that our comfort remain.

In Christ, and for the sake of His supreme glory to the ends of the earth,
Pastor Ryan

Letting the Word Do its Work

On long-weekends, it is the normal practice to sleep-in on the day we're supposed to be working.  Since pastors essentially never get days off, I'm not really surprised that I was up at 4:30 this morning (Monday), taking advantage of some 'me time', which is essentially extra time to read while the girls are sleeping comfortably in their nice, warm, cozy, beds.

In my musings, I ran across a book on Pneumatology (i.e. the study of the God the Holy Spirit) written by my former Church History professor, Dr. Michael Haykin, who wrote something that really caught my attention, as there was a deep resonation within my heart of something that the Spirit Himself has been teaching me of late - the priority, preeminence, and power of the Word of God, not only for Christian ministry, but also for everyday Christian life (which of course, is ministry).  Haykin writes:

"In the early days of the Reformation in Germany, Martin Luther (1483-1586) reflected on the Reformation truths that he and his colleagues were preaching and publishing were making such a deep impact on various parts of German-speaking Europe.  To the God-centered Luther, the answer was patent:

'I simply taught, preached and write God's Word; otherwise I did nothing.  And while I slept or drank Wittenburg beer with my friends...the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it.  I did nothing, the Word did everything.'

In emphasizing that "the Word did everything", Luther is not simply giving his personal opinion, but making plain a vital theme in the history of the Christian faith."

Along the same vein, Christian historian/biographer Iain Murray aptly notes, "The advance of the church is ever preceded by a recovery of preaching [the Word]."

Or finally, as David Platt says in his book Radical Together, "the Word of God accomplishes the work of God."  Platt rightly continues that it is God's Word, and God's Word alone that "forms and fulfills, motivates and mobilizes, equips and empowers, leads and directs the people of God in church for the plan of God in the world."

Perhaps this was why the apostle Paul asked that the believers in Thessalonica would continue to pray that the Word of God would advance rapidly and consequently be glorified, even as it did among Paul's audience there (my paraphrase of 2 Thes. 3:1).

So often in the church I see us as Christians fall into the carnal trap of praying that God would bless "our ministries".  But how rarely do we hear prayers such as "O Lord, that You would bless the ministry of Your Word in that ministry"?  If it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that alone evokes regeneration via the ministry of the Holy Spirit, why then are we so man-centered in our prayers, as if God will somehow use our "Word-less" efforts to accomplish His sovereign purposes in His universe?

Oh that we would remember Jesus' parable of the soils, the very one of which our Lord said is the quintessential one to understand (Mark 4:13)!  If the Spirit does not cultivate and prepare the hearts (referred to as "soil" by Jesus) of our listeners (this of course assuming that we are being obedient to Christ's command for us to preach the gospel, Mark 16:15), we have - as the psalmist so aptly puts it - labored in vain (cf. Psa. 127:1).  Though not all have faith (2 Thes. 3:2), God is faithful (3:3).  He will not, nay, He cannot let His Word return to Him void or null; it will most definitely accomplish the very purposes for which He sent it (cf. Isa. 55:11).

If this is true, then let us pray accordingly, preach accordingly, and live accordingly.  And when we see the powerful might of God's right hand extended as He furthers His kingdom on earth as it is on heaven, let us with Luther appropriately respond, "We did nothing; the Word did everything."

For Christ and the Supremacy of His Name to the ends of the Earth,
Pastor Ryan

P.S. for the sermon I preached last Sunday night on 2 Thes. 3:1-5, see http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?sermonid=8291112232710])