Who's building?

 

Psalm 127

When I read Psalm 127, a Sunday morning conversations comes to mind. A member asked me about another church in town. What did I know about what they were doing? The question came because, apparently, the church was growing. I didn't know the specifics of that congregation. But I knew of their denominational heritage. So, I offered my input. To me, their tradition focused on prayer and other spiritual disciplines. There was a high expectation of that kind of participation from everyone. I don't recall word for word what the member's response was. But it was something along the lines of, "That can't be it." In other words, emphasizing the holy life was not an impetus to church growth. There had to be some kind of marketing campaign or otherwise secret recipe to success. I've long believed you can get people to show up to church pretty easily. If showing up is the main goal, spend the right amount of money and fine tune your message. But then what? Well, then you should retune your message to keep the money coming. To keep the people coming, of course. Plenty of churches do that cycle well. I'm not a fan of that model. In all the retuning, it's easy to lose the simple command of holiness. Not impossible, mind you. Just easy. And in that ease, we start building our own way. Psalm 127 is a song of ascent. It was, most likely, used as people ascended to God's holy temple to worship. That's pretty close to a Sunday morning talk. So, the psalm can be a reminder to build our worship on what God desires from us and for us. If we build church and ministry our way, we labor in vain. Seeing only what matters to us. But refocusing on God's holiness is a sure way to grow as God wants us to and to see the transformation God desires. Stay blessed...john