He told me to tell you that
Chuck Lawless is the Dean of Doctoral Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC.
Mr. Lawless is also a team leader at the International Mission Board for the Southern Baptist Convention and the other day I saw he had written an article on “16 Types of Church Attenders or Church Workers.”
Let me read a few of these different types of church people:
• Workaholic—These people work hard in the church and we are grateful for them because if not for them a lot of things would not get done, but they serve everywhere and lots of times at the expense of their own spiritual maturity, therefore their spiritual growth becomes stunted and sometimes these people. Their motives are selfish, they serve in order to have control over the church.
• Spectator—these people come every week but they sit in the bleachers and all they do is watch.
• Partner—this person understands they can’t do the work of God alone, they know they need both God’s blessing and His help and they understand God has gifted others to do His work as well so they welcome others and help assimilate them to the team.
• Straddler—These people have one foot in the church and one foot in the world, you know who these people are because their church attendance is sporadic.
• Warrior—these are people who get it. They are on your side and they know how to pray. Get to know these people and we have them in our church.
• Lobbyist—This person has one care, one concern, one cause and nothing else matters.
• Prodigal—The prodigal is on their way home, they are not there yet, but they are on their way back. We love these people as much as we love the Warrior.
I didn’t find myself in this group did you?
Sometimes, I guess I’m a little bit of each of them. I can be selfish like the Lobbyist and the Workaholic but sometimes I’m the Warrior, sometimes I’m the Prodigal.
We might have learned as kids, “Jesus loves me” but what they didn’t tell us is that following Jesus is the hardest thing we will do.
It requires constant prayer, sensitivity to the Spirit, confession and repentance, we need accountability from others so when we start to become the less desirable kind of church member someone can throw us a life preserver.
Hang in there, it’s a narrow road but it’s a good road.
He told me to tell you that.
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