Analysis...continued

When I started writing on this topic, the title was "Analysis of a Stagnant Church". But after giving it some thought, I chose to use a more positive, glass-half-full heading. Hence, I titled this series "Analysis of a Church with Opportunity for Growth". And it's true, isn't it? A stagnant church, or one that is not growing, has an opportunity. It's an opportunity to grow and move on to greater things.

As I try and wrap this up, I'm going to share a few observations and then a conclusion. Because of time constraints, this post contains only one observation. Feedback is encouraged and welcome!

Hey, where is everyone?

Our Sunday morning service begins at 10:30. It is very common for there to be only 6-10 people in attendance at 10:25. There is a bit of a rush with folks (including members of the praise and worship team) streaming in within that five minute span and then a good bunch between 10:30 and 11:00. It is unpleasant because there is a sort of nervous, unsettled energy as people rush in. As one who has had to own up to lateness and deal with it in my own life, I believe it is often a symptom of underlying issues. Lateness can signify waning enthusiasm, boredom and lack of interest. It also conveys to others that it's not important to be on time. I think that's the wrong message to be giving each other, visitors- and the Lord. Whatever the causes, I believe this is an issue we need to come to terms with. We need to understand why it is occurring and then it needs to be remedied. Without a doubt, chronic lateness is a stumbling block to growth.

holding back a blessing

"Rise up and praise Him, He deserves our love...."
(Paul Baloche, "Rise Up and Praise Him")


Here's a thought: 

The Father can and does withhold blessings if those very blessings would become a snare. In fact, I think in such a case we are the ones holding back the blessings.

I know this can be hard to swallow, but think about it. If we are in any way wavering in our devotion to Him, do you think His blessing us with something will make us any more devoted? I really don't think so. 

Do you think your children would love you more if only you would give them something they really, really want? Wouldn't that almost be like trying to buy love? "If you'll just do this one thing, this one time, then I'll do whatever you want me to." That's just wrong.

I'm going to get personal here.


I believe the Lord wants us, all of us, to be absolutely devoted to Him, so much so that He will even withhold blessings if those blessings would draw our attention away from Him. Even if those blessings are children. I might say, "Lord, we are devoted to You. We put our faith and trust in You. We serve you in numerous ways. Why is that others who seemed to be less committed, or fail to regard You at all are being blessed with children?" I think He might say something like, "You're not them. My plans for you are for you and they are for your good. You need to hold up your end of the relationship."


Oswald Chambers said we need to be very careful not to substitute service for devotion. Service is to come out of an ongoing, continuous devotion to Jesus Christ. (The Lord opened my eyes to this this morning at the breakfast table.) Everything we do for Him and others needs to be rooted in His love for us and our love for Him. That's why the first and greatest commandment is to love the Father.


I believe He is testing Denise and I in this area, wanting to be certain we are absolutely 100% committed as a couple in our devotion to Him, before a little one comes along, because we all know that won't make it easier. A blessing would end up being a snare if our attention and adoration is drawn to the blessing rather than the Giver of the blessing. 

I believe we've fallen short of what He expects and deserves from us and He's spoken to our hearts on this over the past couple of days. I know we definitely don't have all the answers, though I don't think we need to have all the answers. We still don't know why it took so long to get pregnant, only for it to finally happen and then result in miscarriage, and then be unable to get pregnant again. But we trust Him. He knows what's best for us better than we know for ourselves.

When it comes right down to it, I think the Lord is presenting us with a win win situation.

Haiti Benefit Concert

Here's something you might want to mark on your calendar:

HAITI BENEFIT CONCERT w/ CHARLIE HALL & JUSTIN KENDRICK

On Friday, Jan 29th @ 7pm Frontline Christian Church will be hosting a special benefit concert.

100% of proceeds will go to help in the relief efforts to Haiti. There is a suggested donation of $10.00 and an opportunity for special offering during the night.

The evening will open with Justin Kendrick (Out of Hiding) doing a special acoustic performance and feature Charlie Hall playing a full acoustic set.

Come on out for a night of worship and support a greater cause providing funds for relief in Haiti.

Jan. 29th @ 7pm
Frontline Christian Church
2340 State St.
Hamden, CT

For more info, call (203)887-3141

Analysis...continued

Before I go further, let me say what I probably should have already said. Simply, my purpose here is not to criticize or blame people, but to help bring clarity to the current state of the church of which I am a part. In the process, I hope to gain a better understanding of who we are, how we got to where we are and where we want to go. My hope is that this series of postings will encourage dialogue, especially from those of FCOBSC who may be reading. Of course, I also welcome comments from others who may have thoughts or insights as I believe the general topic of discussion is universal in nature as far as the church at large is concerned.

In continuing with the analysis, I would like to make mention of some of the other things the church has done over the years.

In early 2008 our pastor shared a vision for encompassing the community in prayer. In the following months we spent time on Sunday afternoons (weather permitting) prayerwalking the neighborhoods closest to the church with a small group of people. We covered quite a bit of territory, but found that walking every neighborhood of a city 42 square miles in size would take a long time. The pastor therefore suggested we concentrate on surrounding the city in prayer, basically by prayerwalking its perimeter as best we could, a few blocks at a time. Our prayers ranged from salvation and spiritual growth, to the blessing of marriages and the protection of children. We prayed that hearts would be softened and that people would hear the Lord's voice speaking to them. We prayed for people to have a hunger and thirst for Almighty God and that they would be unsatisfied until those needs were met by Him alone. We've yet to complete this mission, largely due to other church functions on Sundays, but we did manage to cover sizeable areas in Torrington's west and south ends.

As a part of our weekly bible study group we've done a few studies over the years with the use of books and other resources, including a "What We Believe" course put out by Open Bible Churches, "The Purpose-Driven Life" by Rick Warren and "Battlefield of the Mind" by Joyce Meyer. We also watched a DVD series- "Way of the Master" with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, in which they help viewers to share the gospel with others.

We'll continue in the next post as I share some observations.

Analysis of a Church with Opportunity for Growth

First Connecticut Open Bible Standard Church is a small church with a big name; we average somewhere around 25 to 35 people on Sundays. Frankly, the number hasn't really changed very much since the church began about 12 years ago in its current location. (It started off as a house church.) My concern is not simply that the numbers would increase, but that they would increase both with people who are not yet connected and newly connected with Almighty God. Clearly, we've not been very successful in bringing people in, and therefore, not helping people to grow in Christ as much as we could.

Our church is located in a mixed residential and business section of the city. We're centrally located, just outside of downtown on a main thoroughfare. We have the capacity for seating around 80-85 people if we really need to. We have a nursery room for infants, a classroom, kitchen and three bathrooms. We also have our own baptismal.

Our pastor is bi-vocational and has been serving as pastor for about eight years, since he and his wife relocated here from Ohio where he held an associate pastor position. We have a praise team, led my myself, which is quite large- especially for a congregation as small as ours. In addition to myself, there are others who lead worship from time to time. We have a bassist, drummer, five singers, and myself on guitar and vocals. As I said, it's a good-sized group. In fact, it is not uncommon for there to be just as many (if not more) people on the praise team as there are in the congregation at the start of Sunday morning services! Our praise and worship songs are diverse, comprised of a blend of traditional hymns and choruses, modern classics, newer songs, obscure music from independent artists and even the occasional self-penned tune.

First Connecticut Open Bible Standard Church is part of Open Bible Churches, headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. The denomination is considered to be pentecostal, though from my perspective, most of our members and attendees would probably not describe themselves as such.
In fact, I would describe Denise and myself as evangelical rather than pentecostal.

Our pastor delivers weekly bible-based, Christ-centered messages which I find to be enriching and challenging. From my perspective, he has grown considerably in his speaking skills and ability to communicate effectively during his eight years here. He and his wife are very down-to-earth, approachable, humble servants.

Our congregation is culturally diverse, drawing from a rich cultural palate. We have members and regular attendees from the West Indies, the Philippines and Puerto Rico as well as from different regions in the mainland US.

We offer a "children's church" which accommodates toddlers to preteens, a weekly combined prayer time and bible study, men's and women's ministries that meet once per month and monthly potluck fellowship dinners. There are even movie nights and praise and worships nights held on occasional Fridays. Not bad for a congregation of thirty people, right?

The problem is a new face is very seldom seen. In fact, for a variety of reasons we've seen a slight decline over the past few months.

Does any of this bear resemblance to your congregation? What's going on here? Why isn't the church growing? What can be done to stimulate and sustain new growth?

We'll analyze further in the next post.

Are you a people person?

"Therefore, if any is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come." (II Corinthians 5:17 NASB)

We've all heard someone say one or more of the following. Perhaps we've even said or thought them ourselves.

"I'm really not a people person."

"I don't really like to use the phone."

"I'm kind of a loner."

"I don't like hospitals." (Like, who does!)

"I don't like funerals." (Like, who does!)

"The more I get to know people, the more I love my dog." (A bumper sticker I saw the other day!)

All of those "I's" should alone be enough of a clue that our perspective on things is more than a bit distorted. Sure, some of these sound rather humorous but underneath there may be some issues we need to deal with. There may be aspects of ourselves which have yet to be totally surrendered to the Lord and are in need of His shaping.

While I recognize we all have unique characteristics and distinctions that make up our personalities, the love of Christ flowing through us and into the lives of others ought to supercede such natural tendencies. Our love for Almighty God, and therefore for others as well, should be the source of motivation to move us to do what goes against our nature. It should be what moves us to do things we may not feel comfortable doing.

Our desire to obey Him and do what pleases Him ought to override our own preferences. I'm convinced that if we wait until we feel comfortable with doing certain things we may never do them.

I'm so thankful the Lord Jesus Christ was willing do that which was uncomfortable out of loving obedience to the Father!

And I am so thankful for His love for us which brought triumph through the tragedy of the cross. Could it possibly be these things we say or think are just thin disguises for fear or selfishness?

Might it be that we need to love more, and learn to love more?

Let's ask Almighty God to increase the love in our hearts for Him, for His people and for the those apart from Him and let's live in accord with what we pray for, walking in faith, believing He'll do this very thing which is His perfect will, one step at a time.

750,000⁹⁹⁹

Happy New Year! Someone at work mentioned to me today that at least once in her life, on New Year's Eve, she would like to be among the throng at Times Square in New York City. She told me she is not really into big crowds but would just like to experience the annual frenzied spectacle for herself, just to see what it's like.

I don't know about you, but I'm really not into being amidst hoards of people. The closest I've come is probably in attending a professional football or baseball game- and those crowds were only around 50, 000 at best.

Some estimates have the Times Square crowd at around three quarters of a million people.

That got me to thinking.

Let's look at Revelation 7:9, authored by the apostle John as he shares what Almighty God has revealed to him in a vision:

"After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no man could number, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, "Salvation to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb".

Later, in verse 14, we learn this multitude is comprised of those who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

You think there's electricity in Times Square? I used the astronomical number in the title to this posting only to demonstrate the sheer vastness of the crowd of people John describes. It reminds me of God's promise to Abraham (Genesis 22:17) where He promises to makes his descendants as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore.

Whatever the head count is, we do not know because John tells us in Revelations 7:9 that no man could number it. Now, imagine being in the middle of that crowd. And it's a crowd that will indeed one day be gathered. Perhaps it will make Times Square seem like an average day down at the public library!