Seasons in the life of a church

I am a big believer in seasons in our lives. There are seasons of joy. There are seasons of sorrow. There are seasons of health. There are seasons of sickness. There are seasons of strength, there are seasons of fatigue.

The writer to the Ecclesiastes tells us in Ecclesiastes 3:1, "there is a time for everything and a SEASON for every activity under heaven."

What's true of us as individuals is true of us as a church family as well. There are seasons in the life of a living church.

There are seasons of growth and rapid advance. There are also seasons for discipleship and spiritual maturity.

What season are we in at Stone Church? After three seasons of divisiveness and disunity beginning in 1995, our church is ready for a breath of unity and peace.

Yet in this yearning for a time of relational wholeness, we must not relax and allow ourselves to plateau. We must press in and we must press on.

We have a good church filled with good people who want to do great things. The question becomes - are we willing? Are the negatives of the past going to continue to drag us down or can we release them and cut our emotional ties (so to speak) with them so that we an press on with a semblance of being healthy?

I believe so. No, let me rephrase that. I know so.

First Chronicles 12:32 tells us that the tribe of Issachar had 200 leaders "who understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do."

They understood their seasons from God's point of view. They recognized that not only is the flesh at work but the enemy is at work as well.

And they knew what God wanted accomplished.

A healthy church plans.
An unhealthy church solve problems.

A healthy church is:

Proactive and takes initiative for its ministry
Builds on and is renewed by its dream
Ministers to others

An unhealthy church is:

Reactive and surrenders its initiative for ministry
Declines and doubts itself to death
Must itself be ministered to.

We at Stone Church must constantly open ourselves to revitalization. We must dream again! To stand still is to die.

Help us to dream again, Lord!