Tree of Life Blog

A number of years ago, a significant number of Christians turned their back on 10am services on a Sunday, public worship, preaching and structure – what they called the “institutionalized church” and started meeting in small groups in houses.  This has a number of names: house church, irregular church, organic church; but the principles are the same: you meet in houses in necessarily small groups and you focus on building relationships with those people.  This then leads to a disdain and a critical attitude towards any church that meets in a building, that is large and that has structures.

This step is understandable.  There is something missing in your faith if you turn up at church 5 minutes late every week, rush out the door afterwards and never build a relationship with anyone.  There is something missing in a church like that.  But what has happened is people have thrown out the baby with the bathwater.  Rick Joyner says that all error in the church is simply people embracing a newly revealed truth at the expense of other truths.   So as people realize the power of small, they reject and neglect the power of big.  In fact, they will say things like “it’s not about the numbers”, “size doesn’t matter”, “small is beautiful” that make you think that they really do not care about reaching their cities and towns for Christ, but rather care about their culture and small group to the exclusion of the people who need Christ.

So why is this a mis-step and why is this a problem for the body of Christ?  Well, as an experienced church planter who has planted six churches from nothing, five of which I am currently supervising and pastoring, we have had a number of people come from these groups and bringing the house church mentality with them.  We have also met people from these groups at conferences and spoken to them and discussed church with them.  I am absolutely convinced this is not a revival of love and joy and peace and a new way of doing church as some of them think, but a big mis-step that leads to some of the most unhealthy expressions of Christianity I have seen.

Here are 10 Reasons the House Church Movement is a Mis-Step:

1. It is not Biblical.  The Bible has to be our plumb-line.  The Bible is not just the plan of salvation (it would be a much shorter book if it was), but it is the key to how to function as the body of Christ on earth and we should function as a church in the same way the New Testament church functioned.  We find out in the New Testament that they met in the house and the temple (Acts 2.46).  A healthy church needs small house meetings and big temple meetings.
2. It creates a very insular atmosphere and an indifference to the world.  I live in a city of 9 million people.  How you can turn around and say “it’s not about the numbers” I don’t know.  Of course it is.  If you have 8 people in a house, you are not reaching the city.  You are not fulfilling the great commission.  You can start with 8 people in a house (I wish I had 8 people in a house when I started, we started with 3) but don’t end there.  Reach out, go into all the world, make disciples who make disciples.
3. You cannot raise leaders quickly enough to multiply house churches.  It’s simple maths.  If you want to grow and impact the world as a house church, you need to raise up an “elder” or “pastor” who can look after the new house church.  But the group is not being fed the Word, does not have access to the fivefold ministry, is not being sharpened by the larger group, so the people grow slowly.  They will love your little group because of the low-challenge, high-acceptance nature of the group, but they will not grow.  So you stay in your one off small group, chasing people all the time, wondering why people are hard work and why the gospel isn’t changing their lives, and get frustrated.
4. You do not have access to the fivefold ministry so your church is underdeveloped Christians.  I would hate to think how impoverished Tree of Life people would be in 2015 if they had not heard Terri Savelle Foy, Gregory Dickow, Greg Mohr, Robert Maasbach, Bengt Wedemalm and Will Graham.  These people are true fivefold ministries – apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers – who know the love of God, who can equip the saints to do the works of ministry.  Without access to them, or people of their calibre, you are impoverished.  Do you realize Terri Savelle Foy doesn’t come to preach to a “church” of 8 in a Living Room?  Do you realize that Gregory Dickow’s wisdom and depth would never reach a church of 8 in a Living Room?  You need a temple meeting to attract the fivefold.  It’s that simple.  And so because of that, people in house churches are growing at a slower rate, they are not being inspired and challenged and equipped the way they should be.
5. You have no size, so you have no structure, so you don’t know how to work in a structure and honour a structure.  If you have 8 people, you don’t need any structure or formalization.  I have pastored many growing churches, and as things grow you need to inevitably formalize that which is informal.  Some people are just opposed to formality and structure.  They don’t like it.  The reason for that, if you cut away all the theological masks and step through the fog of pious sounding platitudes is that some people do not like structure because some people do not like to submit to anyone else.  Jesus said you will never be entrusted with anything if you cannot be faithful to that which is someone else’s (Luke 16.12).  If you do not learn the power of honour, then you will never truly live.  If you cannot honour your parents you will never have life in abundance (Ephesians 6.4).  If you cannot honour a church, you will never have life-changing experiences in church.

   I have found that the people who come from house churches and small house groups to the Tree inevitably struggle with showing honour where honour is due, because they have never had to before.

   They think that honouring someone is foolish, yet it is where life comes from.  They want the same privileges as everyone else in the church – you preach, so I can preach; the elders can flow in the gifts, so I will just yell out in tongues wherever I want; the preacher preaches for an hour, so when I get up to give my 5 minute testimony I will take one hour; there are people up the front with musical instruments, so I will just walk over to the front and bring my musical instrument to church.  Never following protocol because it is a blind spot to them, and so they then clash with the church because the church is of a certain size and therefore has protocols, they then get disillusioned, call the church harsh, and retreat back to their tiny groups.

   Whenever we get people from house churches, I am always careful to see they are learning honour and learning the culture of honour, because otherwise they will be gone soon.

6. You only welcome people like you, so you never clash with anyone so you are never sharpened.  In any church of more than 15 people, you will clash with people.  That’s not a bad thing, the Bible says we sharpen each other like iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27.17).  When we clash, we can look at ourselves and sharpen up.  A bit of introspection is good for the soul (too much, not so much, but that’s a different post for another day).  People who have only been in a cosy small group don’t clash often, so don’t develop the skills to handle conflict.  In fact, generally the first conflict is when they leave the church family.  Missing out on being sharpened and growing.  Some of these people can be Christians for decades, they can minister the Word, they can flow in the gifts.  But they cannot handle conflict.  As such, that is a danger for any church.  Be aware!
7. You never benefit from the vision of a large service.  One of the greatest things about a large meeting is that it gives vision.  When we had 280 people in one service this year, it envisioned the whole church – this is what it can be every week, we can impact people, we can dream big.  There is something so powerful about people walking into a big meeting – it makes them big people.  Never underestimate the power of vision – vision gives life purpose.  People from small groups do not generally have a purpose that keeps them going through the storms.  They instead rely on the group in a dysfunctional way to keep them going through storms that really they should be laughing through.
8. You never benefit from corporate worship.  Worship music is one of the most important gifts of helps in the New Testament – it helps people focus on God, it helps people consider how big God is, and it prepares people for the life-changing, preached Word.  Don’t get me wrong, there is something special about worship in a small group – all of our small groups have a time of worship in the Tree.  It’s cosy, it’s refreshing, it’s good.  But when you all get together at once, and you have worship leaders who know what they are doing, and that worship is a prelude to a powerful equipping sermon, man that is something else.  You don’t have that in a house church, and so they often don’t understand the power of worship, they don’t understand the role of worship as a help and prelude to the Word. (Again, for another later post, why worship all night long or all service long without the preached Word will never change anyone’s life and is never once found in the New Testament).
9. You do not have a pastor, so you are in a bad place.  The people running house churches are not fivefold ministry pastors.  That’s a given, because if they were the group would eventually grow.  True pastors over time grow churches because they tend to their needs and feed them.  Look at this verse of Scripture:

   But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd (Matthew 9.36, ASV)

   You need a shepherd (shepherd and pastor are the same word in the Greek).  You need a pastor.  You need to be part of a church that has a pastor.  If you are not, you will end up distressed and scattered.  You will come to your house church every week and be soothed and forget about Monday, but you will never be fed and tended to so that you can eat Monday for breakfast.  You end up scattered – a word that means confused.  That is the greatest problem with the house church movement, it is breeding confused people, people without pastors.  That is a tragedy.

10. Finally, confused people deep down in their reborn spirits know that the house church is not enough.  But because the house church does not teach them how to submit to authority, how to handle conflict, how to show honour  – when you do decide to step out of the pond into the sea, you clash, you feel out of sorts and you don’t know why.  You fail to learn why and cannot submit to another church structure long enough to find out why, so you storm off and attack the church, never realizing the problem is in your own heart and own lack of wisdom, and because the nice little house group where everybody knows your name, never prepared you for reality.  Never challenged you to stand up, to honour, to submit, to do things you don’t feel like, to prefer another over yourself.

I have had people get furious at me because I will not let someone I do not know pray for the sick at the end of a service.  It’s not that they are spiritual and keen, and I am envious and jealous.  It’s because they don’t know protocol, they don’t know honour, and they need to learn.  Their fury is prove they need to mature, and have been in a dysfunctional “church”.

So what is the solution – it is simple.  You attend a healthy church that has small groups.  That has a big temple meeting and house meetings, just like the church in Jerusalem, in fact just like every church in the New Testament except Rome (The Roman authorities would not allow the church to have big meetings), and Rome had problems due to that!  You learn how to honour and prefer others, you learn how to submit and be involved in protocol.  You learn how to be faithful with and steward that which is anothers.

Then you end up with true growth, true life and true abundance.  This is the way forward, saints.  Those who are wise will hear.

Grace and peace,

Ben

treeoflife is on Mixlr http://mixlr.com/treeoflife

5.  Give a student £20.  Students always need more money.

4.  Write and post a thank you card to someone who inspires you.  In our e-world, using pen and paper sends a powerful message.

3.  Text your pastor and let him know his teaching is changing your life

2.  Hug your spouse (if you have one)

1.  Tell your children something they have done that makes you proud.

The word “consistency” is very important.  My wife, Amanda, a great Bible teacher, often says “Consistency is the key”.  It doesn’t matter what the lock is – consistency will open it.  Some of you might have watched the recent Doctor Who episode, where the Doctor punches a diamond wall by punching it again and again and again for billions of years.  Consistency will smash diamond!  Consistency creates a Grand Canyon. Consistency is the hallmark of any great ministry, of any great business, of any great life.

Today, as I am talking about the power of loyalty, I would like to say that one of the most powerful things you can do to change your life for the better is develop consistency towards the local church.

When you start a new church, the people who come are often the church hoppers.  They are coming to you because you are new, and when you stop being new they will leave.  What you need as a pastor to grow a great church is consistent people.

There are four levels of consistency, and you need to understand them and work on your heart to become a consistent person.

1. Inconsistency
   1. Inconsistent people are your fair-weather friends.  This is the kind of person who is only consistent when things are going well.  It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is actually inconsistency!
   2. It’s amazing how many people were not my friend when I had 5 people in my living room, who now want to be my friend.  Are now happy to come minister at the church.  Are now happy to get to know me.  One denomination told me they wouldn’t not ordain me because I was too fanatic on healing, yet when I suddenly had a growing church wanted to ordain me.  I told them I was more fanatic about healing than I ever was, but that doesn’t matter now I guess!
   3. There are inconsistent people in every church.  They come when the church is doing well and you have a big name speaker and the church is flourishing.  The second there is conflict or crisis, they disappear.  You can never rely on these people.  These people think they are consistent and have no idea they are not!  If you are a pastor, you need to preach on this every so often and help these people see they are inconsistent.
2. Situational Consistency
   1. The next level of consistency is people who are consistent within a certain situation.  If they are in your class at college, they will be a consistent friend.  As soon as college is over, you will never see them again.
   2. Some people are committed to local church because it fits their situation.  It is the closest church to the train station, to their house.  If another church opens up nearer, they will go there.  They will be utterly committed while they are with you, but the second the situation changes, they will be gone.
3. Non-situational Consistency
   1. This is a great level of consistency.  It is not easily offended, it doesn’t matter if other churches are planted nearby, they still go.  Even if they moved an hour away from the church, they would still come.  They are committed to the house.  They are consistent people!
   2. If you have friends like this, they are friends indeed.  They are your friends no matter where they live, what you do, how often you get in touch.  You pick up the phone, and wow – it’s like the friendship picks up just where it left off.
4. Covenantal Consistency
   1. The highest level of consistency is covenantal.  It is an unyielding, never leaving, never forsaking consistency.  You should absolutely have that in your marriage, and you should have a few friends that consistent to you.
   2. And if you are that consistent to your local church, life will go well for you!
   3. It means that happy times and unhappy times aren’t the issue, the issue is that you are consistent.

If you are a pastor, don’t promote people who only have situational consistency.  If you are in a church, think about your consistency.  If you are a human, do you have friends who are consistent.  Good friends are so important for your destiny.

http://benjaminconway.net/2015/12/20/merry-christmas/

Whatever you are doing if you can cover more ground you can achieve more.  If you are selling liquorice all-sorts, if you can open a second shop you will sell more!  If you can open shops all over the country, you will achieve a lot more.  If you can plant churches with your culture and your ethos across the nation you will achieve more.  It’s kind of simple, but a lot of people don’t realize this.

But here is the truth: you cannot plant more churches, open more liquorice shops if you don’t know how to recognize, develop, nurture and promote loyalty and build a culture of loyalty.

In the last post, we started by saying that loyalty starts at the top.  That’s so important.  You have to model loyalty to get a culture of loyalty.  So if you are a leader or aspirant leader, you have to be loyal to certain and specific people.  This is the number one thing you can do to build a culture of loyalty – be loyal.

• You create a culture of loyalty by being loyal to the people who follow you.  Reward your followers for their faithfulness, if they are in trouble take their side.  Trust me – people are watching.  If you betray them in their time of trouble, they will betray you.  But if you don’t betray them, they will not betray you.
• You create a culture of loyalty by being loyal to your superiors.  David never killed Saul.  He was loyal to Saul.  When people see that it changes how they treat you as their spiritual father.  Many years later, David did something very evil – he murdered Uriah.  Yet very few of his people were disloyal to him: they had learned the power of loyalty from David years before.
• You create a culture of loyalty by being loyal to your friends.  You should have good friends who are peers – pastors if you are a pastor.  You should model good friendships with those people and show that friendship to people.
• You need to be loyal to your spouse.  Marriage is hard work, let’s face it – everyone finds it hard work, even if it is worth it.  If you have a good marriage people automatically see you as a great leader.  If you use the self-control in your spirit and are loyal to your wife, you will be admired as a leader.
• You need to be loyal to your own vision.  It’s amazing how many people expect others to be loyal to their vision but they won’t be loyal themselves!  If your vision is church planting, plant churches.  If it is soul winning, win souls.  Whatever it is – keep to it!  Your life will be better if you are  faithful to the heavenly calling.
• Finally, you have to be loyal to God.  No matter who you are, God is smarter than you – listen to Him and do what He says!

I want to talk some more this new year on this blog about loyalty.  I still believe loyalty and honour are the two missing ingredients in the modern day charismatic church and grace movement.  I believe if we grasped the power of loyalty and the power of honour then we would absolutely and totally see revival in Europe in our generation.

Today, just a simple introduction to the concept of loyalty by pondering the truth that loyalty must start from the top down.  I was trained in a denomination that when you finished Bible College it was most likely you ended up pastoring a small church of 30-40 people.  If you did well and the church didn’t split and no-one killed you, then in a couple of years they would promote you to a larger church.  So these small churches would often go through a different pastor every year or two.

One of my friends left Bible College and got given one of these churches.  On the first Sunday he preached on the need for commitment.  That’s important – you need to be committed.  He preached that you need to be committed to the church, to the pastor, to the vision of the pastor.  That’s all true.  That’s absolutely true.  But at the end of the service, one of the elders came to him and said: “I’ve been in this church for 40 years and you are the 25th pastor I have had.  I know I am committed, it’s you I am not convinced about!”.

You see we cannot preach about commitment if we are not committed.  We cannot preach about loyalty unless we are loyal.  One of my friends, another pastor, once asked me about why my leaders were so loyal to me and his leaders were not loyal.  I didn’t know what to do except praise my leaders (and we have great leaders in the Tree).  But a few weeks later I found out that he was planning to leave his church in 3 years and impress his denomination enough to get given a bigger church.  How can you be loyal to people who you know are leaving in 3 years?  On the other hand, the people in Dagenham Tree of Life know that to get me to leave you will need to kill me!

It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, that went down to the skirts. (Psalm 133.2)

Whatever is in the leader will be in the church eventually.  The starting point for commitment and loyalty is the head of the organization.  If the head is disloyal, the church will be.  That’s one of the main reasons loyalty is not part and parcel of the charismatic move in the UK because some pastors are unreasonable, some leaders are disloyal to their subordinates, some overseers are unkind.

If you don’t want your assistant pastors and elders to call you names, don’t call them names.  Treat them with honour and loyalty.  Be grateful to the people who come to your church.

People do not go to work for money, but for well-being.  Study after study has shown this – make your people feel important and appreciated.  Be loyal to your people!

Loyalty must work from the head down.

A number of years ago, when the church was still growing, I realized I had no other option but to pastor Tree of Life.  Other people were not speaking well of me, nobody else wanted to know me, the Pentecostal denominations had closed the door on me.  I only had Tree of Life.  I wondered if I was loyal or whether I was just only doing what I could do.

I asked the Lord to confirm that I was loyal to Tree of Life.  Within a few weeks I got a phone call from a church whose pastor had just left to the States suddenly and abandoned them.  They were a church of 300 when Tree of Life was only 30.  They offered me three times my salary, they offered me a house to live in for free, they offered to buy me a brand new car.  They had heard me on the radio and loved my preaching and really wanted me to take on the whole church.

It took me a couple of seconds to decide, but I made my decision.  Tree of Life comes first.  That is that.  In 2016, I have many plans to minister overseas – I am getting a lot of invites, but I am planning to be preaching in Tree of Life Dagenham 50 Sundays out of 52.  That’s called loyalty.  That means less income for me, less exposure, less variety.  But it means loyalty.  That is vital for me.

If I was not a pastor, I know some churches I would struggle to be in – because some pastors are not loyal, they are hirelings.  But when loyalty flows from the head, loyalty begats loyalty.

 

Bob Yandian said the number one reason people leave churches is offended.  The problem you need to be very aware of is that being offended is more contagious than the common cold.   You will catch it if you hang around with offended people.  It’s that simple.

Here is a situation I have seen play out more times than I can care to count:  someone in church leadership gets offended.  They are probably called to plant a church or lead a church, but they cannot wait until they are fully baked and prepared for the task, so they run off half-baked, offended.

Because they are not ready and don’t have the skills necessary to start and pastor a church, then they rip apart their home church to build theirs.  They start a church across the road, with a similar name, and try and persuade everyone (especially those with money for *some* reason) to leave the old church and join their new, wonderful church.  (For more reasons on why people act like this, click here).

Now here is how it plays out: like attracts like, and so the offended people in the original church leave the original church and join the new church.

The pastor of the original church is upset and shocked – income is down, the building looks empty on a Sunday, worry sets in about who else might leave, and people have lost good friends.  But if he steps back and keeps his heart clean,  then he will realize the offended person has actually done him a huge favour.  He has cleaned the church from those who didn’t want to be there, and left an atmosphere where the Holy Spirit can move freely and where revival can flow.

The pastor of the new church on the other hand has just created what I call “the fellowship of the offended”.  This is the church you don’t want to be in.  They don’t define themselves by their dream, their vision, their future, their goals, their wisdom.  They define themselves by what they are not, why they left, what is wrong with the other church, what is wrong with *all* other churches.  They won’t preach Christ crucified, they will preach “Crucify him!”.

I remember many years ago being part of a great church.  I loved that church, both my wife and I were there every week, we tithed, we served in different departments, we invested our lives into it and were watching people get saved and healed all the time.  It was the greatest learning and preparation of my life – far more so than Bible College.  One morning I was due to get up about 5am to go to work, and the Holy Spirit woke me up twenty minutes before my alarm.  There was a powerful sense of the presence of the Lord and the Holy Spirit kept saying to me “Stay faithful to [the name of the church], stay faithful to [the name of the pastor]!”.  The Holy Spirit spoke those words to me over and over.

While commuting to work I was confused, I couldn’t understand why the Holy Spirit would tell me to do something that I was doing anyway and absolutely loved doing.

Then within two weeks, the church split violently.   Many people left, including many leaders.  It was a tough time for the church.  Some of the new things and new churches starting looked really exciting and really cool.  They looked like a lot of fun, and new is always tempting!  But I followed the advice of the Holy Spirit and stayed where I was doing what I was doing.

The church was reduced to about 1/3 of what it was.  Many of my close friends left.  People who I respected left and moved on.  It all happened very quickly indeed.  It was a difficult time.  I didn’t know what I know now about honour and offense and the two kinds of wisdom (again click here), but I did know the Holy Spirit had given me a specific instruction and I was not going to disobey that under any circumstances.  And I didn’t, I didn’t just stay faithful, I gave more, attended more, loved more, served more.  Our pastor’s preaching got better and better, more powerful, more human.  I learned so much in that time from him.  That’s where I started to learn about the power of honour and loyalty.

That’s where I started to learn about the truth that you never abandon a leader under attack – that’s where you learn the most wisdom from them, from following them under fire.  I am so glad I stayed.

And those who left, many – not all, but I reckon most – joined other churches that ended up being the fellowship of the offended.  Some are still meeting over ten years later, still criticizing their old church, still teaching their petty disagreements, still hating and still being offended.

Let me teach you how to spot a fellowship of the offended, and then tell you why you need to avoid them like crazy!

1. Somewhere in the preaching they will mention the previous church and why it is a terrible place and the pastor is a bad teacher.  In the more polite versions, it will be “my old church” but seen as nearly everyone there used to go there, everyone will know what is meant.  In the more offended versions, it will be named, the pastor will be named, and the church will be mocked.
2. The leaders will try to please everyone.  This is something quite crazy – the whole point of leadership is making decisions that some people will not like.  I have made many decisions that offend someone!  If two people are having a fight, my peacemaking will either upset one, upset the other, or upset both.  If it doesn’t, they wouldn’t need a peacemaker!  Good leaders aren’t afraid to make hard choices.  David made hard choices, but Absalom found those who didn’t like those choices and stoked the fires of offenses.  These churches are founded by Absalom – a politician who will say anything to reach anyone.
3. The church will be in competition with the old church.  They will be comparing numbers, celebrating when someone changes sides, have similar programmes with similar sounding names, conferences at the same time – they will run up direct competition.  Beating the old church will be more fun than extending the kingdom.
4. The church will be very superficial.  These are people who are not fellowshipping around a revelation of Christ and Him crucified, they are people fellowshipping around their mutual hatred and animosity of the old place.  You can’t build deep relationships on hate, so expect the relationships to be shallow and therefore superficial.  Expect things to look good – people to be well-dressed and well-turned-out – but don’t expect things to be that good under the surface.
5. Expect a genuine fear of the same thing happening again.  People plan for what they can imagine.  If you have ripped a church apart to get pole position, you can imagine that happening to you.  So the church will have numerous safeguards to prevent anyone splitting the church.  For example, the church may be all young people, because older, wiser people might be seen as a threat.  A lot of preaching might be based on loyalty and so on.  The preaching might be against all the other churches, not just the old one.

That is what a “fellowship of the offended” looks like, and the bad news is that if you join one you join them all the way.  I have met people who are offended at another church they have never been to and offended at pastors they have never met because they imbibe the atmosphere of a fellowship of the offended.  This is what will happen if you to one of these places:

1. The attitude of the offended will rub off on you.  The company you keep corrupts your character.  It’s that simple.  It’s stupid to be offended, but it’s even more stupid to be offended at what people did to someone else!  Don’t fellowship with the offended.
2. The church may grow.  There’s a lot of offended people looking for a home.  It will not extend the kingdom though, what you will not here are testimonies of people with changed lives, restored marriages and healings.  You will hear testimonies of people who are now free from the horrible church down the road – which let’s face it, isn’t much of a testimony now!
3. The church will split again. It’s almost inevitable – the foundation and the constant mental state of the people attracts more splits.
4. Nobody will grow.  Jesus told us that we cannot have a harvest in our life with the weeds still in the ground.  One of the weeds (see Mark 4) is the offenses that we take.  It stops harvests in our life.  The power to attract unparalleled success and the power to hate those who have wronged you cannot both dwell in your heart. You have to choose.

If you are in a church that is splitting, don’t run off with the fellowship of the offended.  You may later decide that you should leave your church (see the rest of this series for wisdom on that one), but don’t leave to go to a split, find a healthy church planted by a healthy person to go to.

 

 

 

http://benjaminconway.net/2015/12/10/why-new-years-resolutions-dont-work-and-what-to-do-about-it/

I say what *would* I do, but actually it is what I did do.  I had four children yet was never late, my eldest son was born Wednesday I was in church with my wife and him on the Sunday after.  I have always valued local church.  When I lived in Ipswich, the only Sunday I ever missed local church was the Sunday I was kidnapped.

In Wales, I used to work until 4am, walk home, get home 5am and still be in the 10am service.  I used to get my wife to dig me in the ribs if I fell asleep!

I love church.  If you love Jesus (the head), you must love the church (the body).  How could you love the head of someone and not the body?

So if I was in local church today, and not a pastor, here is what I would do:

• I’d be there.  I’m not stupid – I know you can’t get fed once a month and have that sustain you.  I’d be in every service, every event, every conference my local church organized.  You would never wonder if I would be there, I would be there.  And ten minutes before any meeting started.  If I was on time, I would be late.  I would know I couldn’t come to church once a month or every other week and get the fellowship I need to keep warm to God.
• I would realize that my number one role in the church would be that of a healthy Christian.  I would be planted in the church, I would not get offended at anything anyone said or did – you wouldn’t catch me being so thin skinned that singing the wrong song made me leave!  A student at university doesn’t study geography on day one, then physics, then medicine, then law.  They get in a programme and stick.  I would stick at my church.  I would know how important it was to be planted to be stable because I have read Psalm 92.12-13.
• I would support my church financially.  I would tithe without even thinking.  I would see my giving as vital in spreading the good news and keeping the church that I benefit from so much going.  I would allow Jesus to be the Lord of my finances by giving into the local church.  I would give offerings at every service, and tithe every month.
• I would make all my talents and gifts available to the local church.  I am very good with computers, I’d happily work on the church website.  I’d be available to help where needed.  I’d be an usher on a regular basis, and probably teach the children and youth too.  I’d do anything the leadership asked to be honest.
• I would love my pastor (check out 1 Thess. 5.12-13) – I would know him and love him.  I would also pray for him on a daily basis (1 Thess. 5.25).  Seeing me walk into the room would make him happy!

I’ve been in several churches, and I have tried my hardest to be this person.  It’s how I would still do it today.