My First Monthly Ministry Report

Yahweh Elohim, I Am that is greater than space, time and number is holy, may His kingdom be established in our midst, may His will be accomplished in and through us as He provides for us what we need for each day. May the depth and breadth of our willingness to forgive be a reflection of His forgiveness of us and if we are unwilling to forgive may He withhold His forgiveness in the same way. Our deliverance from temptation and sin can only come from Him for He is our deliverer. All of our influence, power and praise belong to Him both now and forever. Amen

In the past reports for me have consisted of list of accomplishments, average attendances and plans for future events… This is about to change. Instead I would like to share some of the passion that the Lord has given me. That passion can be summed up as “Joining with God in building a healthy Church.” This is my utmost desire and it is the purpose, I believe, God has called me here for. It has been said both recently and in the past that “living things grow,” with this I whole-heartedly agree. However, I believe that our ideas about growth could use some redefinition even reconstruction. Growth in the past has limited mostly to “wide” growth and wide growth is good but only when it is a reflection of “deep” growth.
Wide growth is defined as an increase in attendance at services and events. This is exciting! It is thrilling to be able to share the Gospel with more people and to see people coming to Christ; it is wonderful to see our building full and even bursting at the seams. However, as we have seen, this type of growth is not sustainable. All of those people are no longer here, we are no longer bursting at the seams, and our building is no longer full.
On the other side of the coin is deep growth. Deep growth means just that, God’s people are growing deeper in their knowledge and understanding of God’s Word, relationships with their Heavenly Father and with their brothers and sisters in Christ are growing in depth and richness. With the advance of deep growth the term “church” no longer refers to our building, it no longer refers to our services but it refers to the people of God. Deep growth goes beyond semantics, beyond pet names and catch phrases to the foundation of our reality. If we want to be like the wise man who built his house on the rock as Jesus described in Luke 6:48, “when a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built” we need to dig down deep to lay the foundation on the rock.
The benefits of pursuing deep growth are vast but one benefit that is worth noting is wide growth. Just as a tree sends its tap root down deep to the source of water it also sends out roots in a wide circle to collect nutrients and to stabilize the tree keeping it sturdy and upright when the winds and storms come.
So you see, wide growth without deep growth is a house or a tree easily toppled and impossible to sustain but deep growth allows the house to have a firm foundation and a tree to be deeply rooted and able to draw from the source. I believe we need to pursue deep growth as a Church. I believe we need to discover together how to accomplish this goal. As members of Christ’s body, the place to start is with our own lives. We need to doggedly pursue deep growth in Christ and His Word, allowing His Spirit to direct us to the areas that need fixing, the ministries that need updating, and even to the new ideas that none of us has even imagined yet. Let’s discover together what it means to truly be the Church that God had in mind.