Falling In Love Again (Mike Glenn)

By Mike Glenn

Sometimes, couples fall out of love. There’s nothing wrong, but there’s nothing right either. Lives get busy. Conversations become perfunctory and short. Only the absolute facts are shared. Where are you going? When will you be back? Who’s picking up the kids? Who’s dropping off the dry cleaning? Intimacy is lost. The connection frays. Before they know it, the couple that was once so close has now drifted apart. 

If the couple is smart, they’ll find a good counselor who will tell them to go back to the places where they first dated and rekindle those moments when they fell in love the first time. The couple will go back to their favorite restaurants, sit at their favorite table and remember the conversations that made them fall in love the first time. From those conversations will come a recommitment to the marriage and the couple will begin to reprioritize their time for each other.  Over time, the couple reconnects and falls in love all over again. 

The same thing happens in churches. The original dream of the founders to reach their community for Christ will be lost in the fruitless activities of running the church. Programs and special events require money and expertise, planning and coordination. Running a local church requires a lot of energy. Attendance becomes the gold standard of everything. How many people came? How do we get more to attend next year? Every ministry becomes its own hustle.

Before we know it, the pastor has burned out. Key leaders are angry and disillusioned and the congregation is exhausted from trying to keep up with every new idea the leadership team has thrown against the wall. Attendance begins to stagnate and then decline. Everyone begins to panic. Consultants are brought in. Staff is hired and fired. No one can figure out how to turn the church around. 

What happened?

Simple. The church fell out of love. They got busy doing the activities of the church and forgot to be the church. They misplaced the passion of the original founders to reach their neighborhood for Christ. They exchanged prayer for meetings and a kingdom vision for corporate goals. The church has to fall in love again – with Jesus, with their neighborhood and with their mission. One of the most uncomfortable moments in Revelation (and there are a lot of uncomfortable moments in Revelation) is when Jesus accuses the church in Laodicea of losing their first love. Jesus was still loved in Laodicea. He just wasn’t loved above all of the other loves in that church. Laodicea, like a lot of churches in North America, was distracted. 

Like the couple who had fallen out of love, the church needs to fall in love with Jesus again. The church has to fall in love with the mission of their church in their community. The church needs to go back to those original stories of the founding members and listen to those moments when the church saw God show up. By remembering church is the work of Spirit and not any human effort. The Spirit must be sought and then, the Spirit must be followed. Prayers for each other and care for our neighbors has to be brought back to the center of the church’s work. The church has to remember the vision of Christ that called the church into existence in the first place. 

We probably don’t need to learn anything new. We certainly don’t need any more meetings. We just remember what we once knew but have now forgotten. Jesus loves the people who live in this community and He sent us to tell them. That was always the original vision and it’s still the vision now. Remember. Fall in love with Jesus and His gospel again. Then, we can invite our neighbors to do the same.