As we have discussed, the majority of Christians today are no longer in a vital, living, local church. A primary reason given for this is because they feel that the church is not relevant to their needs; they simply do not feel that much is accomplished by being a part of the local church. Others have been hurt or disappointed by the church and do not want to risk going through that again.
Another primary reason why many do not feel that they have a local church near them that they fit into is because they are not in the right place. These are not in the right place mostly because they made the crucial decision about where they would live based on things other than seeking the kingdom first. Our first priority in choosing where we live should be where we fit into the kingdom, which is presently represented by the church. If we seek the kingdom first, He promises that everything else will be taken care of. If we do not seek the kingdom first, He will still bless His people as much as He can, but we will not be living in His best and highest purposes.
So, getting our geographic location first is vital to a thriving church life, but many who have done this still feel that the church they have been led to is far from what they expect the church to be. Why? There may be a number of reasons for this, and we will cover some of the most prevalent. However, presently there is probably not a congregation on the planet that is all that it should be, just as there are probably not any Christians on the planet that are all they should be. However, we should all be growing, maturing, and making progress toward what we are called to be.
Therefore, one primary ingredient in a vital, healthy, local church, just as in our personal lives, is vision. We must be moving forward. Even biology teaches us that when something stops growing it begins the process of dying. If we are not like Christ, and doing the works that He did, we still have room to grow and should be growing. There are both Christians and churches that stop growing and start being more devoted to maintaining their present position than advancing. Such will inevitably fall into lukewarmness, which is the worse condition that a church can fall into. The Lord promises that He will spit them out (see Revelation 3:16).
Leadership is crucial in every church or organization. The Lord started building His church by building its future leaders. We might think that the church would have been managed much better if the Lord had not gone to heaven and had instead stayed here to run the church Himself, but He told His disciples that it was better for Him to go away so that the Holy Spirit could come. Therefore, the leadership of the Holy Spirit is the most important element of the leadership that we are seeking. The best church leaders are the best followers of the Holy Spirit. For us to grow in spiritual leadership, we must grow in our ability to recognize and follow the Spirit of God.
If we look at the church as a whole, almost the entire church rejected the leadership of the Holy Spirit for much of the church age. Over the last five hundred plus years there has been a step-by-step recovery of this. We can also recognize that probably more progress has been made in this in the last one hundred years than in the previous four hundred since the beginning of the Reformation, which sparked the beginning of the re-formation of the church. This accelerated progress is unquestionably due to the church being open to receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which the Lord will give to all who ask Him for it.
The Reformation began more than five hundred years ago, and the reformation of the church is obviously now accelerating, and it needs to. There is probably more reforming to do before the church is what it is called to be than has been accomplished in the last five hundred years. Even so, we know that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years, so He can do in one day what we might think would take a thousand years. The whole rest of the job of reforming the church can be accomplished very quickly.
The accelerating of the reformation that is now happening is coming in a pattern like birth pangs or birth contractions. The closer you get to a birth, the more frequent and more intense the contractions become, and we see this pattern in the great church movements of recent history. It is going to be an exciting but hard finish! This is because the faster things go, the more that has to be accomplished in a short time and therefore the harder the work or labor must be.
Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians are often under the impression that they are the cutting edge movements and the other denominations have all stopped moving, but that certainly is not the case. Some of the older denominations may have stopped and even become roadblocks to advancement, but many are experiencing great renewal movements as the Holy Spirit moves upon them again. This includes the Catholic, Orthodox, and other "high churches." Likewise, many Charismatic and Pentecostal churches, denominations, and movements have stopped moving, and are just resting on what was accomplished in the past rather than pressing on.
Paul the Apostle, possibly the most effective of all of the apostles in the first century, wrote a discourse in Philippians 3:7-14 which is probably the greatest and most clearly articulated about this attitude. It is even more stunning because he wrote it near the very end of his life:
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ,
and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,
that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;
in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
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.
Think about this: Near the end of his life, a life that was certainly one of the most fruitful in church history, and he is not looking back, but forward! He has the attitude that he has not yet attained, but he is pressing on. If he, after all that he had accomplished, could have this attitude, how much more should we? This is the most crucial attitude of a healthy, maturing Christian life, church, or movement. We must press on.
Maintaining this attitude of humility, teachableness, and spiritual hunger, which keeps us in hot pursuit of God, will be the hallmark of the final move of God that issues in the kingdom of God. Why? If we can maintain this attitude, we will not stop moving and growing until we become what we are called to be in Christ.