Of Conviction

It's taken me a while to get to writing this post because I wanted to be able to re-count and draw from the several experiences that I've had to be able to express the importance of conviction in a way that I want.

To me, one of the most powerful tools, launch pads, spring boards, or whatever you want to call it, is conviction. Conviction, however you want to define it, has the ability to change lives so dramatically; I've seen how it steers the course of a life with full intent and purpose.

Where I am now really is a story of conviction. I often feel so blessed because conviction is not something man made, but it comes from the Spirit. I can see so many periods in my life where I was washed with waves of conviction, which has lead me to where I am today.

In the latter half of high school, I started gaining some really strong convictions for the church. I stumbled upon some of my old journal entries and blog posts from high school, and I actually come away amazed at how I was able to articulate such thoughts at that age. I've always said that I'm not good at articulating things consicely and precisely, but some of those pieces that I wrote still pack such a powerful message. This stage of conviction, I think, was what lead some of my mentors to seeing my call to ministry. When I look at it now, I can see it too. It doesn't just come naturally that I conceive an idea into my brain that we need to be a lot more serious about doing church - it's rather quite supernatural, in fact. I know I ran away from it a good bit, but if anything, the convictions only became stronger until I had to answer to it.

More recently, I'm beginning to grow this passion of looking at the Church from a broarder view than that of a single local body. In studying and learning, the Spirit has been placing on my heart an attention toward the growth of the Church, not just a church. So I started to try diving a little deeper to see where this is taking me. Even in what has only been a couple months, there have been several road blocks, but I'm seeing this image come back to me more and more.

A little strange, but one avenue that I looked briefly at was church planting. Or, to generalize it a little more, building a church from the ground up. There are two central messages that have stuck with me, and really should stick with any church for that matter. The first is disciple making. If you're not making disciples, you're not really doing church. The second is the need for the Bible to hold together everything that the church does. These two things are pinnacle to what Jesus teaches, but so many churches don't resemble them in any way. I don't want to start a church or plant a church just because I'm frustrated with how the current state of churches are, but at every point of a church's life, we have to try to find out where the two pillars are. If there are things we're currently doing that don't involve or work toward disciple making and/or biblical truth, I'd argue that you have no purpose doing them.

So it's a little funny that my path in life intersects the path of Newbern right at the 40 year mark. I don't think these convictions are by mistake, because I feel the need to be asking these things to my church as we move forward. Honestly, I don't know how much impact I'll have on this church. But if I leave here without having done everything with the purpose to make disciples and to know the word of God, then I will not have had the full impact that I could have had. It will also mean that I've run away from this tremendous conviction of building a church that I've had over the last few months.

Again, conviction is so powerful because it's supernatural. I just see this fear and doubt that covers so many people so that they aren't able to pursue conviction the way it's meant to be. You hear people say every now and then, "If it's in God's plans, it will come to you eventually." I'm sorry, but where in the Bible does it tell us to just sit here and wait for God's plan to come to us? We're not called to be infants who just lay here and wait for people to come feed us. Being the Church requires us to be active and on the move. Lots of people can't settle at a church because it doesn't give them what they want. How about we start with the one we're at and work together to become the church that we are taught to be?

"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:33)