A paraphrase of some ideas Rick Warren has on how to grow a church that I found in a column written by Rich Karlgaard in Forbes magazine (2/16/04).
Don’t try to make your church grow. Instead, work to make your church healthy. Because if it’s healthy, it will grow.
Church is designed to grow, Warren contends. Water it well, nourish it properly, provide a safe environment for it to exist in, and it will flourish just like a plant grows healthily when provided the same. You don’t have to make the plant grow. It grows naturally when surrounded by the right conditions.
Providing the “safe environment” to grow in is often the greatest need when preaching radical truth. In Christian Science, it’s done through vigilant watchfulness and prayer to keep out the aggressive elements of the carnal mind that want to stop the advance of Love’s message of peace and spirituality to humanity. Prayer-warriors–on guard!!
I love the thought that church will grow naturally. We MUST do the work to see that the nurturing of church and our church experience is governed by the Divine.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected.”
What a lot to ponder in this statement! And as it relates to “Church: The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle…” (Pg. 583:14 S&H)…not as a material structure, but the “building” (adverb) or ever-unfolding of the idea and identity of Church in the Mind that is God. I love this! God, Mind, is building church, is ever “growing,” unfolding, His own consciousness of Good! And as His idea, man, we are ever growing in OUR consciousness of Good, by reflection. So, “church” cannot help but grow!
We see this growth AS we become more conscious of it.
What a divine idea!!
:<))