What Are the Essentials?
There are only two essential elements for a church to be effective:
Matthew 22:37-40“>1. People who genuinely love Jesus.
Matthew 22:37-40“>2. People who genuinely love each other.
Anything less isn’t church.
Anything more is personal preference.
No personal preference is worse than any other—unless it draws people away from either of those essentials.
No personal preference is better than any other—except to the person whose faith is strengthened by it.
The Relentless Battle
The problem with our personal preferences is that we really do prefer them. Sometimes we prefer them over the actual essentials.
It’s too easy to allow nonessential preferences to take over our lives, churches and ministries. The danger isn’t that we’ll fail, but that we’ll do the nonessentials so well that we’ll accept them as a substitute for successful, effective ministry.
Perhaps the #1 job of a church leader is not to let our guard down in the relentless battle to keep the nonessentials from crowding out the essentials.
So what do you think? How are we doing on the essentials?
