Organizing Shortfalls Away

The Bible teaches us about the local congregation of the church. It shows us what God has put in place to govern these local congregations under the leadership of His Spirit. God gives us the direction we need to be the church He has called us to be. However, it seems that we can't stand it unless we add to that instruction. No longer are we content to build the temple according to the instruction of God, we must build it to fit our wants, or even "felt needs."

Here's where we find the problem with this issue: It becomes very easy to organize around our shortcomings rather than mature and overcome them. Here's an example: The Bible teaches us that we need fellowship with one another. We are not always good at practicing this, so we mandate that we must spend time in fellowship with one another. Fellowship is not bad, but the fact that we would mandate it keeps us from maturing. Rather than overcoming our spiritual shortcoming (lack of fellowship) we create programs to organize it. It may accomplish some sort of fellowship immediately, but it does not help us mature. And this is not the only example of this that we see in the church today.

If you take an honest look at the church today, it would be hard not to admit that we are organizing in place of maturing in a lot of circumstances.