You cant do it ALL….AND YOU SHOULDN’T EVEN TRY…

 

In Philippians 3:13 and 14 Paul wrote…

“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (bold mine)

 Paul had one intent, one aim…that was to not live in the past of who he was but instead to focus on the task ahead of him. He says – ONE THING. Paul doesn’t say I am going to do these 15 things . He didn’t say that he wanted to start a cornucopia of “stuff” but he wanted to focus on moving forward to what was ahead, toward a goal.

 For the church – it cannot linger in the past, it cannot long for the good ole’ days. It can remember the good times (which by the way also include some bad times that we conveniently gloss over) but it cannot live there.

The church must also make a decision to succeed at that ONE THING – that is to the goal of the call of Christ Jesus. Let me rephrase that – the gospel MUST be central to everything.

Anything that does not have that at its central goal, focus and aim, well it might be a nice thing to do but it detracts from the Christ appointed goal.

You cannot DO everything, nor can the church take on every pet project or passion of every person in the church. Again, not that those things may not be good ideas, but that the question must be asked – DOES THIS HELP THE GOAL?

 At the fear of offending someone; giving blood is nice but does it really help the church achieve the stated goal – pushing an agenda of social justice might be honorable but the church wasn’t called to share social justice… its not part of the stated goal.

The members of a church are full of honestly good ideas, personal agendas and things that are very important to them. But the church must focus it’s energy, heart, passion, resources, etc… in spreading the gospel and sharing Christ.

So the difficult but honest truth is – a church, like a person, CANNOT do it all and it is foolish to even try. Along with that, just because a church is busy doesn’t mean that it is effective. More often than not it just means it’s tired, and most likely NOT effective.

 Horses in a race (often horses pulling carriages) wear blinders or blinkers. These devices are in place to remove distractions from the horse so that they are not thrown off track. Interestingly these blinkers are not to simply keep from distractions on the sides but are also to keep the horse – wait for it – from looking back!

 So in a way, the church must often put on blinders from periphery items that will distract from the goal. To remain focused on the track that they have been given.

No church can do it all, and they shouldn’t even try….