Myth: if you fail once in cell church ministry, don’t try again (continued)
Truth: you need to be willing to fail several times to get it right (continued)
I’ve had the excellent book, Boundaries, on my bookshelf for several years and never read it. About a week and a half ago I picked it up, read it, and loved it! One thing that stood out was that God wants to us to keep on moving forward. Cloud and Townsend say:
Passivity never pays off. God will match our effort, but he will never do our work for us. That would be an invasion of our boundaries. He wants us to be assertive and active, seeking and knocking on the door of life. . . the “wicked and lazy” servant was passive. He did not try. God’s grace covers failure, but it cannot make up for passivity. We have to do our part. The sin God rebukes is not trying and failing, but failing to try. Trying, failing, and trying again is called learning. Failing to try will have no good result; evil will triumph. God expresses his opinion toward passivity in Hebrews 10:38-39: “‘But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.’ . . . Passive shrinking back is intolerable to God, and when we understand how destructive it is to the soul, we can see why God does not
tolerate it (pp. 99-100)
Yes, cell ministry is fraught with dangers, tests, and failures. Victories also abound. But we’ll never reach the victories unless we are willing to learn through the failures. We must keep moving forward. I’ve noticed the tendency in some churches to not stick with the cell church vision long enough to see it work. When dry times occur, they quickly move on to new techniques. Instead of failing forward, these churches blame the cell model and abandon it for a new program.
Move ahead and learn deep lessons from the fiery trials. But do keep moving ahead. Don’t shrink back!
Comments?
Joel