Church

When People Go

/ Dennis Griffith / 4 Comments

Let’s face it, it is one of the bummers of being in ministry – or for that matter, of being a part of a church. While death and taxes may be among life’s inevitables,  sadly, if you are part of a church, so is periodically watching people go out the doors.

With the Wal-Martization of the American church the contemporary mindset seems to be: “What’s the big deal?”  Which makes sense. I’d be a bit perturbed if I got attitude from the manager and/or employees of Wal-Mart simply because  they learned I had recently been frequenting Target.  So what if someone decides to “shop” at First Church of What’s Happenin’ Now instead of the congregation in which they had taken vows to “support the work and the worship to the best of their ability”?

I get it. I just don’t agree.  The church is not supposed to be like a Wal-Mart.  It is supposed to be a Covenant Family. But not all church members see it that way; not all churches either, for that matter.  So there is not much those left behind can do about it.  Despite the revolving doors local congregations just need to press on.

But what if an opportunity presented itself to say something to one of God’s wayward wanderers? What would you say? What should you say?

In a recent article for 9 Marks blog by Jonathan Leeman muses:

Let’s face it: there are better and worse reasons to leave a church. Are you moving to another city? That’s a good reason. Are you harboring bitterness toward someone who has offended you? That’s a bad reason. Does the church neglect to preach biblical sermons weekly? A good reason. Do you not like the church’s style? Probably a bad reason.

The question is, how should you respond to a fellow member who is leaving for what sounds like a bad reason?

I really appreciated Leeman’s, thoughtful, Biblcial, practical, suggestions.  To read the rest of Leeman’s post, click: What to Say to Church Members Leave for Bad Reasons.

Total Church

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

I have recently been listening to Tim Chester and Steve Timmis speak about Total Church. I appreciate their emphasis that two key principles should shape church life: gospel and community.

As Tim Chester writes:

Christians are called to a dual fidelity: fidelity to the core content of the gospel and fidelity to the primary context of a believing community.

Wondering about what I would consider an important, really an essential, third spoke, Mission, Chester elaborates:

Whether we are thinking about evangelism, social involvement, pastoral care, apologetics, discipleship or teaching, the content is consistently the Christian gospel and the context is consistently the Christian community. What we do is always defined by the gospel and the context is always our belonging in the church. Our identity as Christians is defined by the gospel and the community.

Timmis and Chester suggest “Being gospel-centered actually involves two things”  So really we have three principles at work.  Christian practice must be:

1.Gospel-centered

  • gospel-centered in the sense of being Word-centered
  • gospel-centered in the sense of being mission-centered (or what I would call being gospel-driven)

2. Community-centered (or what I would call a gospel-formed community)

Here’s how it fleshes out. Contrasting the common polemic nature within much of Christianity, Chester says:

In practice conservative evangelicals often place a proper emphasis on the gospel or on the word. Meanwhile others, like those who belong to the so-called emerging church, may emphasize the importance of community. The emerging church is a loose movement of people who are exploring new forms of church. Each group suspects the others are weak where they are strong. Conservatives worry that the emerging church is soft on truth, too influenced by postmodernism. The emerging church accuses traditional churches of being too institutional, too program-oriented, often loveless and sometimes harsh.

So let us nail our colors to the mast. We agree with the conservatives that the emerging church is too often soft on truth. But we do not think the answer is to be suspicious of community. Indeed we think that often conservatives do not ‘do truth’ well because they neglect community. Because people are not sharing their lives, truth is not applied and lived out.

We also agree with the emerging church movement that often conservative evangelicals are bad at community. The emerging church is a broad category and an ‘emerging’ one at that with no agreed theology or methodology. It means generalizations about emerging church are far from straight-forward. But many within the movement seem to downplay the central importance of objective, divinely-revealed, absolute truth. This may not be a hard conviction, but it is a trajectory. Others argue that more visual media (images, symbols, alternative worship) should compliment or replace an emphasis on the word. We do not think this is the answer. Indeed we think emerging church can sometimes be bad at community because it neglects the truth. It is not governed by truth as it should be, so its community is too whimsical or too indulgent. It is often me and my mates talking about God – church for the Friends generation – middle-class twenty and thirty-somethings church. Only the truth of the gospel reaches across barriers of age, race and class.

If this all sounds a little too radical, to me it sounds a lot like what Francis Schaeffer trumpeted a generation ago.  Check out Schaeffer’s Two Contents, Two Realities.  What Chester and Timmis advocate seems to be two of the principles Schaeffer emphasized: Sound Doctrine and the Beauty of Human Relationships.  Listen to what they say:

We often meet people reacting against an experience of conservative churches which has been institutional, inauthentic and rigidly programmed. For them the emerging church appears to be the only other option. We also meet people within more traditional churches who recognise the need for change, but fear the relativism they see in the emerging church. For them existing models seem to be the only option. We believe there is an alternative.

We want to argue that we need to be enthusiastic about truth and mission and we need to be enthusiastic about relationships and community.

And finally Timmis & Chester offer a warning notice:

[WARNING:] Rigorously applying these principles has the potential to lead to some fundamental and thoroughgoing changes in the way we do church. The theology that matters is not the theology we profess, but the theology we practice.

As John Stott says:

“…our static, inflexible, self-centered structures are ‘heretical structures’ because they embody a heretical doctrine of the church. If our structure has become an end in itself, not a means of saving the world it is a heretical structure.”

Bashing the Bride

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

This video cracks me up… and it also makes me a little sad.  It is sad because this critic is all too familiar – not just to me, but probably to most church leaders. In our consumer culture, where some people have little more allegiance to their covenant community than they do to Wal Mart, K-Mart, or Target, it is all too easy to complain and then cut-and-run.

Jesus calls the Church his “Bride”. Joshua Harris calls such nit-pickers “Church Daters”.

What are the Marks of  Church Dater?  In his excellent little book, Stop Dating the Church, Harris identifies three:

  • Me-centered
  • Independent
  • Critical

Harris goes on to write:

Church-daters don’t realize that what they assume is working for personal gain is actually resulting in serious loss – for themselves and for others.

The plain fact is, when we resist passion and commitment in our relationship with the church, everyone gets cheated out of God’s Best:

  • You cheat yourself.
  • You cheat a church community.
  • You cheat your world.

And Harris suggests something about a lack of commitment to the local church:

Wouldn’t that be like telling your new bride that while your love is true, you have other priorities? Your heart of course is all hers, but as for the rest of you … well, you’ll be in and out.

But Harris also offers this encouragement:

When a person stops “dating” the church they’re not just adding another item to their “to do” list.  …Instead they’re finally getting started on experiencing all the other blessings Jesus promised.

Harris is right, on all accounts.

I have no doubt that criticisms often leveled against the Church – the churches I have served, and all others – are probably aimed toward at least a kornal of truth.  Churches have problems. Churches are filled with people, all of whom have problems. There is an old saying:

This church would be a wonderful place… IF it wasn’t filled with all these people!

So finding things to bash is not difficult.  No question the local church has warts and scars that make her at times less than attractive.   But she is the Bride of Christ.  So it might be helpful for us all to remember how precious the Bride is to Our Lord. He is aware of the present realities – the ugliness. But he has also promised to make her beautiful.  As John Stott reminded us about the Bride of Christ:

On earth she is often in rags and tatters, stained and ugly, despised and persecuted. But one day she will be seen for what she is, nothing less than the bride of Christ, ‘free from spots, wrinkles, or any other disfigurement’, holy and without blemish, beautiful and glorious. It is this constructive end that Christ has been working and is continuing to work. The bride does not make herself presentable; it is the bridgegroom who labours to beautify her in order to present her to himself.

Screwtape Meets the “Me Church” Generation

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Among C.S. Lewis‘ masterful works is the Screwtape Letters.  For those unfamiliar with this book, Screwtape is a fictional senior devil mentoring his nephew, Wormwood, a junior devil, in undermining his “patients” new found spiritual journey.  When reading Screwtape Letters it is important to remind yourself that everything is presented from a backward perspective – from a perspective a devil might have.  In these letters God is the “Enemy”.

Here is what Screwtape says about Churchgoing:

Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization [neighborhood church] should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction. In the second place, the search for a “suitable” church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.”

I suspect Screwtape would be very pleased with the whole “Me Church” culture – both those individuals who embrace it and the churches that promote it.

If you are curious about the Screwtape Letters, they are available online:

4 Ingredients for an Assimilation Recipe

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

It has been said:

When people visit a church they are not so much looking for friendly people as they are looking for new friends. If all they wanted was friendliness they could go to almost any store in the mall and find it.

I have always sensed that there is much truth in this statement.  But understanding this is one thing, knowing how to practically flesh it out is quite another.  It is a question of assimilation: How do we connect new folks with others in our church, and to the church itself, to a degree that these newcomers feel they can make it their home?

There are at least four ingredients that should be integrated and implemented:

1. Awareness of the Stranger in our midst

Sometimes churches are so in-grown that the people do not even seem to be aware of newcomers. They warmly greet one another, and chat with long-time friends to catch up on the week and to get the follow-up details from previous conversations. And this may be a genuine expression of caring people.  But when the focus is so zeroed-in on the old friends, the antenna sometimes fails to pick up the presence of the newcomer.

How should we resolve this? It’s simple.  Mike it a priority to look for unfamiliar faces first.

2. Greeting Strangers

It should go without having to be said, but it does little to no good to be aware of newcomers if we do not act on that awareness.  But it is something that does have to be said.  As I have seen, many times church members may scan the room for “outsiders” yet make no effort to greet them – much less welcome and befriend them.  So ingredient two is simple: Greet the Stranger.  Make the effort. Go talk to them.  In fact, it might be a good idea to implement the 2-Minute rule in many of our congregations.

What is the 2-Minute Rule?  The 2-Minute Rule is simply this:  after the service, or during a greeting time if one is offered during the service, church members are not to talk to their friends for the first two minutes, unless no guests are present.  Find the visitors. And if they are in a crowd talking to other church members, find someone you do not ordinarily talk to and talk to them.  Some may need to extend this to a 5-Minute Rule, especially in larger, newer, or growing churches.

3. Ask Questions to Connect

Simply saying “Hello” and/or “Welcome” is certainly better than ignoring the stranger, but it does not lead to developing relationships. It is not an adequate expression of the hospitality we, as Christians, are expected to practice.  We need to go further. We need to begin to connect.  It is only through personal connection that newcomers will begin to feel at home.

One question to avoid would be: “What are you doing here?” (Though, I suspect this probably is the question most frequently conveyed, whether spoken or not, in most in-grown churches.)

But what questions should we ask?  Well, there are many that could be appropriate.  Perhaps some suggested questions can be the topic of another post.  In the mean time, just ask any of the women who were in a college sorority.

4. Connect People to Other People

There is a general rule of assimilation that people need to make a minimum of five personal connections in a church to feel at home. (This is especially true for women.  And 80% of the time it is the wife who will make the final determination about what church a family will ultimately attend.)  So while it is great to connect through questions, it is equally important to introduce newcomers to other people.

Introduce people to those you know best. Introduce them to people you know who have similar interests, or are in a similar life stage, or live in the same neighborhood as the the strangers.  Introduce them to other newcomers.  Just realize that the more introductions the more opportunities to make those connections necessary to make one feel at home.

These ingredients in no way exhaust the components of an assimilation plan, but they are a simple and significant starting point.

Worship God Seeks

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

I wonder what would become of the worship wars in our congregations if we recognized the truth in what worship leader/songwriter David Ruis expresses:

“The worship God is seeking relies completely on His initiative, knowing that the only true expression of worship is through the abandonment of all our agendas for His, as we trust in His sovereign power and unlimited grace. It is from this heart posture that true liturgy flows, that music and arts find their highest calling and that the light of a worshipping community shines as a beacon of hope to a suffering and searching world.”

Missional Shift

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

In his book The Present Future, Reggie McNeal reveals and contrasts different ways leaders can think about the church and its ministry. McNeal reflects upon the different paradigms that pastors can have as they lead and conduct ministry in the church.

Being missional is a shift in thinking about the nature of the church. Once a missional understanding is adopted, the way we do church begins to change.

A missional church stresses:

  • community transformation over growing the church
  • turning members into missionaries over turning members into ministers
  • and recovering Christian mission over doing church better.

Steak on a Paper Plate

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

Steak on a Paper Plate

I am not sure I agree with everything he says, but Trevin Wax offers some very insightful thoughts worth considering about contemporary worship wars:

More and more churches are focusing on the centrality of the Word in worship.
The resurgence of Reformed theology among younger evangelicals, the reestablishment of a rock-solid belief in the inerrancy and inspiration of the Scriptures…, the revival of expository preaching… this wave that we’re riding is about to collide with an even bigger wave: the dominance of contemporary worship styles across the U.S. and the world.
For many churches, the biggest requirement for a “worship set” is novelty. We’re aiming for an experience. So we put together a worship service that is more influenced by the latest hits on Christian radio than by theology or history.
We also try to put people at ease. “Good morning… Let’s try that again, GOOD MORNING!” There’s a chatty, street-level style of worship that has become prevalent in evangelicalism. And I’m not sure how our pursuit of novelty and casualness in worship is going to mesh with hearing the Word of God expounded upon in all its glory.
Can a contemporary, casual service bring worshippers face to face with the glory of God in a way that buttresses and upholds the magnificent truths being expounded from the Word? I think the answer is yes, but not always.
It’s like eating steak on a paper plate.
My wife is an excellent cook. Her Romanian dishes dazzle my tastebuds, and her American cooking is terrific too. In the past couple of months, she has been using paper plates frequently. I understand why. We don’t have a dishwasher. She wants to save time setting the table, and she doesn’t want me washing dishes after dinner. Paper plates are easy and disposable.
But after a few weeks of paper plates, I told my wife, “Your cooking is too good for paper plates.” Slapping down a hot dog and baked beans on a paper plate in the middle of summer is just fine. But when my wife makes her famous pork chops and rice, or her Romanian cabbage rolls, or steak and mashed potatoes, paper plates just don’t cut it. I said, “Let me wash the dishes. But at least give us dishes!”
When it comes to worship, we are frequently told that form doesn’t matter. Style is not what’s important. I get that. I’m not downing contemporary music or advocating a return to liturgy, organs and hymns. I’ve been in contemporary worship services that have put me on my knees before the holiness and majesty of God. Cultural forms adjust and adapt.
But in worship today, there is a tendency toward casualness. The emphasis on feeling God’s closeness in worship may short-circuit the possibility of being transformed by a glimpse of the Transcendent One. There’s hardly any room for feeling awe in worship, and I can’t help but think that part of our problem is the form.
Form and content mirror one another. A church with serious Bible preaching is going to have a serious worship service (contemporary or traditional isn’t what matters, but serious it will be). A church with a feel-good preacher is going to have peppy, feel-good music.
Christians need to sense the weight of God’s glory, the truths of God’s Word, the reality of coming judgment, and the gloriousness of God’s grace. Trying to package the bigness of this God into most casual worship services is like trying to eat steak on a paper plate. You can do it for awhile, but at some point, people will start saying, “I want a dish.”
Trevin Wax is an Editor at LifeWay Christian Resources, and former Associate Pastor of First Baptist Church in Shelbyville, TN. This article appeared on his blog, Kingdom People – Living on Earth as Citizens of Heaven http://trevinwax.com/ and is used with permission. I first read this piece on The Aquila Report.

Art of Our Discontent

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

Trevin Wax asks these questions:

How do unbelievers know we are Christians?

  • By the fish symbols on our car?
  • By our bumper stickers?
  • By our voting patterns?
  • By our church attendance?

No. Jesus tells us that the outside world will know we are Christians by the way we love one another.  (John 13.34-35; 1 John 4.12)  When we submit to one another in love, we bolster our evangelistic witness by showing the world that love and authority don’t have to be separated.  God’s rule is life-giving.  He rules us for our good and for his glory, and the church reflects that loving rule.

(From Counterfeit Gospels, page 157)

But what about when that love runs cold?  What are faithful followers of Christ to do when we grate on one another or disappoint one another?  I am not talking about when we are in conflict, necessarily. I have in mind when we just seem to grow apart?

This is a pertinent question to ponder, because inevitably most will experience this in at least some relationships with others in our churches.  So how are we to respond? How can we most glorify God in these situations?

First, let me offer an illustration of a way not to respond.

Once, in a previous church I served, I participated in a discussion with a church member who had seemingly disappeared.  As we inquired about him, how was doing, and what he was up to, he informed us that he had been disappointed by some of the Elders in the church.  None of us had been aware that this had been the case, so we were filled with a mixture of emotions: sadness, disappointment, frustration, etc.  One man asked him why he had not made this known, why he had not followed the pattern of Matthew 18 to seek reconciliation and restoration of relationships.  His response: “Matthew 18 does not apply. None of you sinned against me.”

Somewhat perplexed, I inquired: “Had someone offended you because of sin would you have then followed Matthew 18?”  He assured us all that he most certainly would have done that.  And I believe him. He was (and is) a faithful man, zealous to be obedient to God.

I felt I had no choice. I had to point out the absurdity of this logic.  He was missing the whole spirit of the instructions for the process of reconciliation. True, Matthew 18 is a process that must be undertaken and which could culminate in some form of church discipline. But it is not discipline the Lord delights in.  Our Lord delights in heartfelt relationship.  What this man expressed was essentially that he would have shown more love and concern for his fellow Christians had any of us been guilty of offensive sins.  Absent that, he felt he had no responsibility to seek to restore these relationships.  In other words, he would have loved us more had we sinned against him than he did because we had not.

I suspect his dilemma is not uncommon.  In our disposable culture it seems relationships are among the easiest things to discard.  But as I posed at the beginning of this post, this is not the way things ought to be among those in Christ’s Church.  As J.I. Packer observes, in his doctrinal handbook Concise Theology:

“The task of the church is to make the invisible Kingdom visible through faithful Christian living and witness-bearing.”

I think Packer sums it up beautifully.  Our task is to embody the values and principles before a watching world. By doing so we become a living demonstration of the way things ought to be – and one day will be.  As we live this out, perhaps especially in relationship, we are counter-cultural – i.e. we present an alternative to the culture in which we live.

So how should we respond when we feel we have drifted apart from others in our church? How, practically, do we honor God with our relationships?

Continue reading →

5 Reasons Church Leaders Quit

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

Why do so many church leaders quit or go into early permanent retirement?  This is epidemic these days.  According to Pastor in Residence, a ministry aimed at restoring ministry casualties back to active duty, at any given time as many as 33% of American pastors consider throwing in the towel.  And this is not a problem isolated among the “professionals”.  Some of the same stressors also plague non-staff church leaders.

Perry Noble offers some wise insight aimed at my ministerial colleagues – and me.  These are things we need to be reminded regularly.  I know I do.

#1 – Burnout

I once heard someone say, “I would rather burn out than rust out.”  Uh…BOTH are bad because NEITHER of them finish well.  Too many people in the ministry work themselves into a frenzy, never take time to disconnect and refresh, and do absolutely nothing for fun–this always ends badly!

When it comes to leadership circles in America, we’ve equated being busy with being godly; however, the haunting reality that confronts that idea is what God Himself said in Psalm 46:10, “BE STILL and know that I am God,” not “be busy!”

If we are not taking regular breaks, doing things “just for fun,” and disconnecting, then burnout isn’t a matter of “if,” but “when!”

#2 – Unrealistic Expectations

Too many people believe that “ministry = easy” despite the fact that it seemed to go really badly for everyone in the Scriptures that sold their lives out to Him!  Jesus went to the “place of the skull” to be crucified…why would we ever believe He would lead us to “the place of the mattress?”

When we impose our plans and ideas on God and refuse to surrender to His, it usually leads to people “giving up” because “God just didn’t come through.”

#3 – Criticism

Criticism hurts, it always will, and if it ever doesn’t, then, according to my counselor, something is dead inside of you.  And it is always personal (especially when someone begins with, “Don’t take this personally, but…).

You can’t let the critics dictate what you think/feel!  If you have a ministry that constantly responds to critics, then you will not have one that responds to Jesus.  You MUST respond to the people who God has placed in your life to surround you and protect you–that’s not criticism but rather correction.  However, you cannot allow those who know you the least to control you the most–period!

#4 – Discouragement

Every church leader I’ve ever chatted with has done some serious battles with discouragement.  After your message on Sunday, the enemy comes in and begins to accuse you, telling you that you did a pathetic job and that no one is going to come back next week.  I’ve had to battle discouragement during the message before, hearing voices inside of my head saying things like, “You stink, these people hate you…you need to quit the ministry…” and so on.

This is why it is essential for leaders to get in a place like David did in I Samuel 30:1-6.  David faced an incredibly discouraging situation and yet somehow managed to find His strength in the Lord.  I do this by reading through encouraging letters and e-mails that I’ve received in the past, placing myself in encouraging environments, and focusing on what God’s Word says about me.

#5 – Losing Focus on God’s Power

When we actually believe it is up to us to make people come back to church every week rather than believing we are conduits that God wants to work through to do that very thing…it’s over!  Because we fall into the trap of trying to outdo ourselves every week, every series and every year and prayer/seeking the Lord become some things we love to talk about but fail to do.  He saves…He draws people…and He uses us to do it.  It’s not up to us but rather we need to allow Him to work through us to accomplish all that He wants to do!

Face it; on our own, we don’t have enough power to blow our noses.  We need Him. He is the game changer!

~ Perry Noble is pastor of New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina

Living Together as the Church

/ Dennis Griffith / 5 Comments

The late theological statesman, Edmund Clowney observed:

“If we lack interest in the church we lack what was for Jesus a  consuming passion. Jesus loved the church and gave himself for it (Ephesians 5.25).”

Jesus’ love for his church is evident throughout the pages of the New Testament.  In Matthew 16.18 Jesus promises to build his church. In fact he promises to empower it and protect it to such a degree that even Hell itself can not stand against it.

In Ephesians we are told that we, the followers of Christ, are the Body of Christ. (Ephesians 5.30) And the way the world will know we are his people is through the way we relate to one another. (John 13.35)

OK. I know that there is little, if any, new ground being broken here so far. What I have written is widely understood and little debated by those who are followers of Christ.  But while these principles are widely known, lesser understood is how we can -and should – practically live out our life together as Christ’s Church.

The folks at 9 Marks have developed a wonderful little e-book that helps lay a solid foundation and offers wise instruction about life together.  It is titled: Living as a Church.  Originally a Sunday School curriculum, each chapter is only about 3-4 pages designed to spark conversation as well as instruction.

Below are the links to the various chapters. I commend them all, but they are also of value considered by subject of interest.

  1. Introduction: Unity- God’s Goal for the Church
  2. Church Membership: Context for Unity
  3. Preaching: The Foundation of Unity
  4. Corporate Prayer: God’s Power Creates Unity
  5. Church Government: Godly Authority Fostering Unity
  6. Fellowship: Building a Bond of Unity
  7. Discontentment: A Test of Unity
  8. Church Leadership: Submission for the Sake of Unity
  9. Church Discipline: Preseving God-honoring Unity
  10. Serving & Giving: Sacrifice for the Sake of Unity
  11. Worship: Praising God in Unity
  12. Corporate Evangelism: A Harvest of Unity

What Makes a Good Church?

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

Steve Erickson of Pointway Church in Baxter, Minnesota serves up some up beat thoughts to the question: What makes a good church?

“What makes a good church?

If all the…

…Lazy folks get up
…sleepy folks wake up
…Discouraged folks cheer up
…Gossiping folks shut up
…Dishonest folks fess up
…Estranged folks make up
…Depressed folks look up
…Disgusted folks sweeten up
…Lukewarm folks fire up
…Sanctified folks show up
…Leading folks live up
…Vowing folks pay up
…And all soldiering folks stand up.”

Organic Church

/ Dennis Griffith / 4 Comments

You will observe that I am not merely exhorting you “to go to church.” “Going to church” is in any case good. But what I am exhorting you to do is go to your own church – to give your presence and active religious participation to every stated meeting for worship of the institution as an institution. Thus you will do your part to give to the institution an organic religious life, and you will draw out from the organic religious life of the institution a support and inspiration for your own personal religious life which you can get nowhere else, and which you can cannot afford to miss – if, that is, you have a care to your religious quickening and growth. To be an active member of a living religious body is the condition of healthy religious functioning.

–B.B. Warfield