Contentment

When the church gets caught up in "Keeping up with the Jones," or the church across town that seems to be running over with folks trying to get in the doors, it has lost sight of who it is.  Even as there is only one of each one of us and we run amuck when we try to turn ourselves into someone else, so it is with the church.  Each church on the block is different.  Each one is brought into being to be who it is and not simply a replica of another in another place.  

To say we do not get caught up in this trap is pointless when we consider the number of books we have read by "successful pastors" and the number of how-to-do it seminars we have attended, or would like to attend.  Too many of those of us who serve the church know that only one more book, or one more training experience will turn the place where we are into some church that will be the envy of the ecclesiastical world, or at least the envy of the community pastor's association.    

Contentment is a hard thing to attain.  And, then, contentment can be a negative factor if is it is a fail safe used when the hard work of preaching and pastoring does not want to be done.  Too many times those in spiritual leadership cannot be settled with the place God has put them.  We end up looking over the fence and spend more time trying to figure out how to get over the fence instead of being content with working the patch where we are standing.  God does not call churches to keep up with any other church, but to simply be the Christ centered spiritual community God calls it to be in the place He has called it to be.