If Only For One...

 If there is one book that I would recommend to pastors, preachers, or teachers, it would be the book that I have been reading by C.E. Jefferson called, "The Building of the Church." I have shared excerpts from the book recently and I will continue to do so. Here is another page from one of the greatest books I have read....

  A sharp distinction ought to be made between a church and an audience. It is to be regretted that we have come to rank churches by the size of their nominial membership, and to judge preachers by the number of persons who listen to their sermons. A superficial man is consequently tempted to work, not for a church, but for an audience. An audience, however, is not worth working for. An audience is a set of unrelated people drawn together by a short-lived attraction, an agglomeration of individuals finding themselves together for a brief time. It is a fortuitous concourse of human atoms, scattering as soon as a certain performance is ended. It ia a pile of leaves to be blown away by the wind, a handful of sand lacking consistency and cohesion, a number of human filings drawn into position by a pulpit magnet, and which will drop away as soon as the magnet is removed. An audience is a crowd, a church is a family. An audience is a collection, a church is an organism. An audience is a heap of stones, a church is a temple. Preachers are ordained, not to attract an audience, but to build a church. Coarse and ambitious and worldly men, if richly gifted, can draw audiences. Only a disciple of the Lord can build a church.~C.E. Jefferson

 Remember that Jefferson wrote this in 1910, almost one hundred years ago. Sounds like he is speaking of today's times, huh? This book has taught me a lot about myself and the responsibility of the call. I hope that it does the same for each.

Comments

[One Wink]

I like Jefferson's definition.
Growing up in a Catholic congregation, often times I had the impression that Church was somewhere to go to show off your "Sunday best" to a lot of strangers. I never felt a sense of family there. There have been times in my adult life that I felt more like I was in a church sitting in the woods with the trees and the birds.