Providence Church was honored to bring in 46 new members yesterday. We don’t treat these new members like a badge of honor for meeting our annual quota. Quotas be damned! There are blessings for growth to which any congregation must steward well.
We can’t live in the romantic era wishing things remained neat and tidy because romanticism is a subtle form of deception. The parents with five children who long for the good ol’ days of one child are likely failing to handle the present by longing for the past.
Growth can be a sign of health, but if not carefully shepherded, it can be the first real feature of compromise. Like all our members, these new members are aware that to be a formal member means that they are formal representatives of a body. This means that they must take Paul’s words seriously to avoid a quarrelsome spirit, seek the unity of the body, commit to the church’s doctrine and life, and avoid the all-encompassing expressive individualism of our day.
We are also quite aware that there will always be growth areas for parishioners and pastors, but these areas of sanctification occur within an established paradigm of commonality, which does not mean “precise agreement” but general and charitable agreement on the trajectory of our congregation as a local body, and a body within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.
Pray for us because we pray for many of you (within and outside the CREC) in Escambia County and around the globe.
