I'm not talking about the nursery, I'm talking about babes in Christ.
The church at Corinth was told by Paul, "I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly - mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready." (1 Corinthians 3:1-2)
It seems that Paul was addressing Christians, but Christians who had not grown in their Christianity. They were not trained and they were not discipled.
The saddest thing about our churches today is not that we don't win more people to the Lord. That's because we don't preach the gospel We preach other stuff, then tack the gospel on for good measure.
The saddest thing about our churches today is that we "dip 'em and drop 'em." Or we give them a short course in what Christianity and/or the church is about and turn them loose to do what they will with it.
The saddest thing about our churches today is that we have no organized, deliberate ministry to help them grow in the Lord both in knowledge and in service.
We seem to think Christians can be grown from the pulpit. Because of the nature of one man standing before a crowd speaking platitudes (whether rightly or wrongly), it is impossible to grow them into a thriving army for the Lord. He is too easily turned off and tuned out. There are too many distractions and too much room for diversion.
To be sure, there are churches built on the preacher and the worship service that are large, but large does not equal grown.
Joel Osteen preaches before thousands every week, but the majority of them are just bystanders who are there to have their ears tickled with Osteen's peculiar doctrine of prosperity mixed with egoism. His church is large, but his members are babes in Christ (if they are in Christ at all).
The saddest thing about our churches today is that they think they can grow church members if they just get the worship right.
Worship is important. It is one of the two reasons we meet together on Sunday mornings (the other being to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord). But worship alone cannot build a mature, functioning church.
To build a mature, functioning church there must be a way of involving individuals in a proper reading and understanding of God's Word, making it personal in their daily lives.
There must also be a way to grow them in sound doctrine and in being "doers and not hearers only" of the Word.
We must also understand that babies, as well as babes in Christ, do not know what to do or how to do it. They do not know how to think. They do not know how to grow. And they are all at different stages in the process of growing in Christ. We must be careful not to discourage them or run them off because we demand of them something they do not yet understand and are not trained for.
Finally, there must be a way of enlisting people as they grow into works of service. They must learn to be deacons, teachers, missionaries, ministers, children's leaders, youth leaders, music leaders, hospitality coordinators, groundskeepers, and whatever other needs the Body of Christ might have.
The saddest thing about our churches today is the attitude that we will draw them in with this kind of worship or that kind of worship and then will let them find their own way.
How sad.
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