Last month I blogged (all right, I whined) about how we don’t measure the right things. I’ve been thinking all month about what we measure. In 1965 the Polish Atheist Society published a paper on 5 things that Christianity has given the world that only Christianity can give. Among these Christian values for which world culture is indebted are the following: 1) the supplanting of law in favour of love; 2) the ideal of an end to arrogance in human relationships; 3) the truth that man does not live by bread alone; 4) the abolition of the idea of the chosen people [affirming the truly “catholic’ or universal notion of human society]; 5) that the world suffers from an organic imperfection.
As a church perhaps we can measure the following:
- List the ways in which your church has shown love to your community.( James 2:6-13)
- What evidence is shown that we are truly humble instead of prideful in our relationships with our community? (Might this eliminate advertising which puts down other churches as not being relevant, hip, and cool?) (James 1:9ff)
- List the incidents that show the people in our church living by faith rather than by sight. (James 2:14-26)
- How are we living out our commonness among those around us? James 2:1-6
This didn’t start out to be connected to the book of James, but as I thought about what the Polish atheists saw of value in Christianity, I became convinced that one of the measuring rods by which we should count success, is the book of James.
How does your church plant measure up?
