A Church for Weak Christians
Sometimes I hear about churches that would rather have a congregation of 150 truly faithful over a congregation of 350 of weak Christians. This is really a funny situation or desire. First of all, can you really have a church of one or the other. Can you have the entire church full of mature Christians and can you have a church totally full of weak Christians? Probably not.
It seems though that sometimes churches see the 150 strong Christians as a better option than the 350 weak Christians. People say, “we rather have 150 people that are totally dedicated to the Lord than 350 people that are weak in the Lord. It reminds me of those math assignments in elementary school, “put the alligator’s mouth on that which is greater.” Often people would place it on the 150 strong Christians. But I would argue that you could never have 150 strong Christians in a congregation. This is an impossible situation because these Christians would not be that strong. First of all, if the congregation remains at 150, it seems that these strong Christians are not that evangelistic. Also, these 150 of spiritual strength must not be that loving and friendly because if they were people would be flocking to the congregation. And the ultimate problem with this value system of picking the 150 over the 350 is that the 150 would be the most selfish and internally focused congregation ever. What ever happened to the strong serving the weak (Rom 15:1-3). If you have all these strong Christians, the 250 weak Christians need to be mentored, loved, and encouraged by them. And what about the weak Christians, do they not deserve to be in our churches. These are the people that we need to work with the most. Not consider to be less than the strong Christians.
It is my value to have a church for weak Christians. We need to be working with them, not pushing them away. I would rather work with a congregation of 500 weak Christians than one of 150, because if they are so strong, they do not need me to work with them. So Lord, let me be a minister to the weak and not to the strong.
Related posts:
- Misconceptions of pre-christians and Christians
- A BASIC LIBRARY FOR CHRISTIANS
- The Four Emotional Reactions to Church–Church is Pointless
- Four Emotional Reactions to Church-Church is Purposeful
- Happy Church or Sad Church
About The Author
What do you think?
The “one mite” widow may be a lot stronger than she appears.
Numbers can be illusory. From God’s perspective, the congregation of 10 may be accomplishing much more good than a congregation of 500. Look at Jesus in John 6 — the multitudes went away and He was left with just a few, but He changed the world through those few (and in the process the few were forced to consider whether they themselves were following Jesus or merely following the crowds). I think that this principle is at the heart of the oft-repeated and occasionally misguided sentiment that, “I’d rather have a small group of faithful / strong / committed / whatever than a larger group of weak / lukewarm / whatever.”
John