{"id":34361,"date":"2022-09-10T21:25:31","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/keepers-of-the-aquarium\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T21:25:31","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:25:31","slug":"keepers-of-the-aquarium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/keepers-of-the-aquarium\/","title":{"rendered":"Keepers of the Aquarium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent article for ChurchLeaders.com, Charlotte pastor Steven Furtick argues that most churches &#8220;say they want to reach people, but in reality they&#8217;re more focused on preservation than expansion, on keeping people rather than reaching them. They let saved people dictate style, saved people dictate focus, saved people dictate vision.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The result is a room full of saved people, not people getting saved. Why? Because the people you&#8217;re trying to reach aren&#8217;t interested in the church that has been created by the people you&#8217;re trying to keep. If they were, they&#8217;d be coming; but they&#8217;re not.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For some reason, right here is where people usually play the discipleship card. They&#8217;re trying to disciple the people they&#8217;re trying to keep. They accuse you of pitting evangelism against discipleship.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But that isn&#8217;t the case. I just believe true disciples should care more about making disciples than freeze-framing the church the way it was when they became one, or wanting 26 programs customized to their liking. If the mark of Christian maturity is a bunch of people who want to create a museum glorifying and preserving their personal preferences and then sanctify it by calling it a church, count me out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some people say, &#8216;Why can&#8217;t we have both?&#8217; You can. Focus on the people you want to reach, and you&#8217;ll keep the people you want to keep. Let the rest walk. They&#8217;ll find a church elsewhere to graze.&#8221;&nbsp;(Click here to read the full article.)<\/p>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_container the_champ_horizontal_sharing' data-super-socializer-href=\"https:\/\/www.preaching.com\/articles\/keepers-of-the-aquarium\/\">\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_title' style=\"font-weight:bold\">Share This On:<\/div>\n<div class=\"the_champ_sharing_ul\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent article for ChurchLeaders.com, Charlotte pastor Steven Furtick argues that most churches &#8220;say they want to reach people, but in reality they&#8217;re more focused on preservation than expansion, on keeping people rather than reaching them. They let saved people dictate style, saved people dictate focus, saved people dictate vision. &#8220;The result is a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/keepers-of-the-aquarium\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Keepers of the Aquarium&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}