If you look closely you may be surprised at the answer!
In an interview Ed Stetzer of The LifeWay Research Blog commented that:
My observation is that we often preach against sins that are not a problem in our church (sins more prevalent in the world) while not preaching against sins that are a common problem in the church
Ed states that the biggest sin in his church relates to a lack of ministry involvement by the majority of those who attend. He goes on to make the illuminating comment:
If I preach about gay marriage, everybody cheers. If I preach about sin you can hear the amens ring. But those aren’t the real problems. I tell people that the biggest sin in our church is you sitting there doing nothing and still calling yourself a follower of Jesus.
I’ve often said something similar because it’s always annoyed me when churches and Christians rail against homosexuality while I think God looks down at them and weeps at the pride he sees in those churches and amongst those people who profess to follow him.
In the church I’m honoured to lead we don’t have that many people who are sitting doing nothing. One of the reasons may well be that we make sure there are lots of opportunities for people to serve in ways that do not take up too much time.
That said, we would actually prefer to see less of our people serving in church and the more of them making a difference in the lives of their neighbours and work colleagues. We still think of this as ministry involvement but it’s a ministry involvement that’s very hard to quantify.
Question: What do you think the biggest sin in your church, or in the church generally, is?
Photo credit: seeminglee
Tags: Christianity, Gay, Homosexuality, ministry, Pride
{ 2 comments }
I completely agree with this Paul and caused a big hesitation for me coming back to the “physical” church. I was tired of Sunday Christians being prideful in their Christianity while not living a christian life or looking outside of themselves, being judgmental and narrow minded does not show a good example of the way to follow God. To me you need to walk the walk. There are always things we can do and people we can help which shows the true meaning of being a christian. The very best of this can be outside of the Church with no one to see except you and God, and leads to others having a relationship with him.
Hi Iona
Thanks for the comment and the honesty. I suppose the big thing we need to do (other than walk the walk ourselves) is to make sure we don’t judge God based on some human beings faults!
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