Bigger churches don’t mean better. God is not concerned with size but with the heart of the believers, no matter what size the church is.
There must be a strong commitment to doing what the Bible says, and not doing what people want, not doing what other churches are doing
Is Jesus the Head of your church? Does He have preeminence in it or have many churches drifted to a consumerism mentality? He had no denomination in mind when He said He would build it. The church is built on hearing of Jesus Christ and that He died for our sins and then you believe in Him.
A church must always be continually devoted to the teaching of the sacred scriptures. A church that teaches from the Word establishes deep roots that provide nourishment and stability.
The first principle is the most important. There must be clear, biblical thinking that overrides secular planning and a corporate mentality. There has to be a priority of biblical, rather than secular thinking (p. 18).
A second principle is that studied, accurate decisions must originate from God’s Word, not human opinions. A true, spiritual mind-set comes from meditation of the Scriptures. The imperative would be to stay biblical.
The Word of God ought to be central to every worship service on Sunday, every meeting, every activity of the church.
If the church was doing what it is supposed to be doing, people could not stay out. Curiosity would bring them in. They would witness our love and our excitement and think, they’ve got something special there that the world doesn’t have.
Amos 8:11-13 says, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: 12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. 13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.“.
Famine of the Word in churches is happening too a watering down of the Word.
This famine is happening today. What isn’t helping is that 16,000 pastors leave the church every year.
Why the famine of the Word? Perhaps consumerism has created marketing of Jesus or the Gospel. But the trend that really concerns me is the fathers leaving the church.
A 2000 study found that the religious practice of the father of the family that, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from church of the children.[1] If both father and mother attend regularly, 33 percent of their children will end up as regular churchgoers. If the father is irregular and mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves. If the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshippers.
In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper.
Malachi 4:6 says that God “…will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
This curse seems to be happening today.
Luke 1:17 And he (John the Baptist) will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous–to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
When dad doesn’t go to church has the greatest impact, for whatever reason, on their children attending church later in life. When the father attends church regularly, then the children are more than 50% likely to attend. So this Malachi Four and Luke One Scriptures make much more sense. This spreads the famine of the Word even more so. It is small wonder that God warns that a curse will fall on the land. For where there is no Word, there is truly a famine…a famine not of bread or water, but of the Word. And the Word is life.
1. The Truth About Men and Church on the Importance of Fathers to Churchgoing, by Robbie Low.
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