How satisfied are you with your church? If you were rating it on trust pilot how many stars would you give it?
We live in a consumer culture where we rate things all the time. My wife laughs every time we go to IKEA because I can’t help but showing my irritation in the form of a rant at the stations at seemingly every department inviting you to say how satisfied you are or are not but hitting the appropriate smiley, bored, frustrated, or plain irritated smiley face! Apparently punching each button isn’t appropriate!
So it’s no wonder we find ourselves rating church. But actually we should always expect room for growth and change in our church families just as we ought always to see the same room in ourselves. That doesn’t make us critical of our churches but it should create a holy dissatisfaction that prays for, acts to create, and longs for more even as we love and thank God for our churches. Our attitude to church isn’t binary – for or against, positive or negative. It is to be grateful and thankful but also to long fo fit to be what Jesus wants and by the Spirit empowers us to be.
Over Lent we, as a church, have taken a 40 day prayer challenge, and one of the things we are praying for is for growth in our church in terms of maturity and gospel understanding and application. To that end we’ve used Ephesians 4v11-16 as a basis for our prayers. There we see thankfulness as well as a desire for growth.
How would such an approach, such prayer change our attitude towards church and our engagement in it?
Al Gooderham 