100 Days to a Healthier ChurchSample

Day 16 (Sunday) Today’s Big Idea: Is our culture ready for the mission? If you’re using your Sunday sermons to help the congregation walk through this process, I’d suggest a sermon for this Sunday of “Digging through the Dirt” on the Parable of the Sower. Jesus describes a farmer sowing seed that inexplicably lands on four different types of soil. I say “inexplicably” because every person listening to Jesus that day lived in an agrarian society. Even those who weren’t farmers by profession lived close enough to the land that they were aware that no farmer just randomly scattered seed. They all knew to prepare the soil properly and place the seed in holes that had been dug for them. Because Jesus started His parable with this twist, every listener immediately would’ve thought, “This isn’t about farming. It’s about something else entirely.” It’s the same in our churches. After years of doing things “the way we’ve always done them,” it’s easy for a church to stop being about the mission and start becoming about something else entirely. This Sunday is a great time to remind the church body what we’re supposed to be about. A sermon on the truths of the Parable of the Sower is an ideal place to start. Use the text and the lessons learned from the Saturday meeting to prepare the hearts of the people for the changes that are coming. If the church is Stubborn, don’t beat them up for it, offer them the chance to start softening their hearts. If the church is Shallow, help them start the move toward maturity by reminding them that church exists to worship Jesus and serve others, not to make ourselves comfortable. If the church is Busy, don’t attack their beloved programs and events. Give them some what ifs to think about. What if we focused in on a few things we did well? What if we stopped scattering seed randomly and started placing it carefully on good soil? What if we could transfer our valuable time, energy, and resources from things of lesser value to things of greater value? Today is not the day to berate people for their faults, but to give them hope for the future. After all, your CLT may be coming to church today feeling anywhere from excited about new possibilities to terrified and discouraged about the size of the problems. Yesterday was about assessment. Make today about encouragement. Key Verse: But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown (Matthew 13:23). Thoughts to Consider: How did our church culture get to where we are now? Have I contributed to that in any way? What will it take for our church to make the necessary changes? How can I contribute to it becoming healthier?