Are We Full of Talented People but Void of Spiritual Power?

I don't know much about church growth anymore; I once thought I did. I got real heady a few years back when all of our church-growth plans began to come together in a fruitful fashion. Then, not long thereafter, they started to fall apart. Rapid growth (rapid for us anyway) turned to decline. The decline came with a full plate of humble pie; filling no doubt, but tough going down. Now, a few years older and wiser, I am again trying to give credit where credit is due. Having eaten more pie than I wanted I am confident in saying now that if I once thought I knew a bit about the subject I am now writing, I am convinced that I no longer do! What I do know, however, is that as the Lord extends patience to His church for their lack of trust in Him and over-trust in themselves, we must learn to be rapid learners.

To build our lives around Jesus, I am learning, is to make Jesus our foundation. It is to stand on Him. It is to gain one's strength, energy and motivation from Him alone. It is to awake each new morning with the awareness that, once accepting Christ in belief and baptism (see Acts 2:38-40), I am now animated by the Spirit of God so long as I do not quench the Spirit's work in my life. I am now become a temple on heals. I can move where the Spirit leads to do what the Spirit demands. When I get out of bed in the morning, the right side or the wrong side, I can shout with confidence, "I have power, through the Spirit, to put to death the deeds of my body and the thoughts of the mind and to accomplish supernatural things like moving mountains" (see Mt.17:20).

The more I trust in the truths of God's Word- the more I actually believe in what He has told me and live as if they were as true as the sky is blue, the freer I shall be to be used by Him. The Spirit is quenched, however, when we begin to believe and act as if we do not need the branch we are sitting on. Over time we begin to notice our gifts/talents and how good we are at them. We notice their effectiveness in impacting people. Our increasingly polished performance as a Christian leads us to believe we are quite special and needful and good enough. Our preaching becomes an act of creative persuation to make them like us. Our friendships become our attempt to network in order to move up the social and economic ladder. We become gifted salesmen instead of lamps of light who bring warmth and visibility to all we pass. As we graduate from Spirit-reliance to self-reliance we steadily cut through the branch we are sitting on and plummet to our spiritual death. And, as you can imagine, the church begins to decline.

This "cutting off the branch" is what I believe to be a fundamental wound in the life of many congregations today. It was for ours. We all want the church of Jesus Christ to grow. We all want to see every soul from here to Zimbabwe build life around Jesus. But in an effort to spread the gospel far and wide we have forgotten the life-source of our very selves. What I learned in our time in the valley is that it is not so much important for the church to figure out how to spread the gospel to her communities; what's important is to be people who deeply depend on the Spirit of God for all movement. You see it is the Spirit of God who will lead us and empower us to reach our communities. Jesus said,

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen" (Mt.28:19-20).

As we look at this passage, how did Jesus intend to be with us to the end of the age? By His Spirit He would give. It was the Spirit Jesus sent whom Paul relied on to accomplish all he did. He said to Philippi,

"For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death" (Phil.1:19-20).

Through other Christian's prayers and the supply of the Holy Spirit Paul was empowered to plant numerous churches. We need the Holy Spirit alive in our churches! By this I do not mean that we need more Pentecostals. We need congregations who are full of people walking by the Spirit, not by themselves. Francis Chan calls the Holy Spirit the "Forgotten God" of the Christian church. Have we forgotten the One who gives us life and breath and all things?

What would happen if our preaching (my preaching) was less creative this Sunday and more Spirit-empowered?

What would happen if my conversations with my lost friends were less about the right things to say and more about the love of the Spirit of Jesus exuding out of me?

What would happen if our worship gatherings began with congregational confessions of need for God's Spirit instead of incredibly talented and polished worship bands impressing us?

For us, and for many others, we were a congregation full of talented people but, in many ways, void of spiritual power. Years down the road now I believe our congregation recognizes better than ever that if we are going to unite to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our community, we must rely on the power of the Holy Spirit inside us to do it.

Creative preaching with out spiritual power is dead.
High energy worship without spiritual power is dull.
Highly motivated and  talented Christians without spiritual power are fruitless.
Innovative and expensive marketing campaigns without spiritual power are a waste of the Lord's money. (Yes, we may have wasted some money).

May the church become, no, better than that, may I become a person dependant on the Holy Spirit (through prayer, fasting, scripture study and Christian community) who daily experiences the Lord's hand in my life. I won't expect anyone to do what I have not done first.