Faithbase

Hey guys blessings to you. Hope you're doing well today. I'm doing part two of my metrics series metric Meaning like a unit of measurement and the first part of talking about what our metrics to determine spiritual maturity. I Think sometimes we'll get confused with the world's standards or metrics And so my second question for metrics has to do is how do we measure the metrics of? Whether or not the church is successful And I say that's just not Not speaking poorly of any specific church But in the u.s. There's a temptation to think that the metrics of success of a church have to do with the three B's Buildings how big and how many buildings? Budgets how much money we have and the third part of bodies how many people? And by all means I want to see the church flourish and thrive on all the churches to flourish and thrive with lots of people and plenty of money to advance Kingdom projects and Buildings and facilities, but those aren't really the best metrics reason I say that is the church can actually be growing and be unhealthy and The opposite is true. It could be shrinking and be healthy And I say they say, you know remember John the Baptist it says this incredible thing about him This is of those born of women. There is none greater And yet his followers decreased decreased same as sure Jesus's followers decreased. Remember when he's on the cross all he had was John and ladies a Small band of ladies who are faithful to him. So I asked well, what is our metric? How do we determine if the faith if the faith community the church is Successful, what's our metric? And I think the answer really comes down to It does come down to health. But are we remembering? What's most important? Is that the church's purpose is to fulfill the mission of God? It's a purpose really we think about it. We're just waiting for Jesus's return And as we wait we are called to steward everything Well from a resource and our thoughts and our children and our attitudes and our spiritual gifts But there's a three-part focus and lots of churches in different denominational Affiliations will process and use different language about the purpose of the church Reformers love news glorify God and the Baptist used to talk about the five-part focus and I would just say to make it simple There's an inward And upward and outward focus inward We're called to be mature and complete Confirm more to the image of Christ As our first prepare ourselves as the bride There's the upward to give God glory to give him praise to worship him to know him and make him known And then there's the outward component into loving our neighbor inviting them into the gospel inviting them into the faith community Telling them the good news of Jesus So just say this as a reminder to remember the main things my wife reminds me to keep the main thing the main thing It's easy to get distracted on things that are subordinate but let our metric of success be are we really Remembering the purpose of the church is to fulfill the mission of God