Decline Is Never the Only Option
How are you growing these days?
John Ortberg | posted 11/04/2009
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- Phoning it in. Funny how this one gets sensed by everyone around a person before it gets sensed by the phon-ee himself. Sermons get perfunctory; teams lose morale, planning gets second-rate effort, accountability for results diminishes; and there is a general collusion to not name the dynamic.
- Cynicism. When other ministries are being effective, instead of producing joy, it creates a sense of envy or a feeling of being threatened. Rather than seeking to learn from it, stagnant people will find some pretext for judging or dismissing it.
- Spending more time looking in the rearview mirror than out the windshield. More stories get told about how things once were than about what may yet be. Who wants to be watching the road when all that's left is a dead end?
The good news is that stagnation is never inevitable. I may not be able to control outward events. But God has other plans. As a wise man wrote long ago, "Outwardly we are wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day …"
God never aims at deteriorating slowly.
John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
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