The issue ahead for Churches of Eastern North Carolina

What an amazing journey God has had me on in recent days. I will not share it all here but I will add pieces for the next several posts. It has to do with a quest to find some tangible answers to the two real issues the Lord continues to burden my heart with, they are the declining state of our Churches and the unchurchedness of Eastern North Carolina. I know that we must face the truth of where we are and we must begin to tell the truth, but frankly I was carrying a lot of guilt about just speaking to what was wrong and not able to get my hands around a clear path to some answers to the situation. The journey is leading me to what I feel are some clear handles. I will address them one by one in posts but for this one I will just say that it has to do with our systems. We can not allow ourselves to fell guilt because it is not people that have failed, it is our system that is failing. What most Churches are doing is only leading them to decline, what most supporting groups such as the Association are doing is not helping the churches because the system is producing what we are getting as a result. Two things must change. The local church must abandon it's system as it stands and return to the New Testament system that we have abandoned. Quite simply we have allowed secondary issues to become primary to our systems. The second is that the supporting systems, especially the Association must totally turn its attention to one issue, helping Churches be the church. In my next blog I will talk about some specifics and about what I see is our biggest obstacle.