And, unfortunately, few people read their Bible regularly. If we expect something to happen in the future, we must plan for it to take place. If you wish to own a home, you must decide what type of home you would like, survey where you would like to live, determine what financial obligations you can assume, and then purchase a home with a plan for how to make the payments. If we want something to happen, we must be intentional about how to make it happen. Yet I have discovered that we leave these planning ideas at home when we think about the future growth and development of our congregations, or we expect it is the responsibility of some other person to shape the future.
Many people never invite another person to visit their church home.
Often we expect youth and children to be seen but not heard. Yet we expect that somehow our church should grow both numerically and spiritually. Yet we expect worship attendance to grow, even though we do not attend with regularity. A lot of our congregations hold their annual meetings in late fall or in January. Typically these meetings receive reports of the past year and approve the budget for the year ahead.