Simply a Good Idea

One of the insights that we have come to as we have gone through our January semron series called Motive '08 is an understanding that we, as a church, need to simplify how we do things. More is not always better. Life has gotten so full of choices and ideas that sometimes it is simply overwhelming. Think about how many messages you hear throughout the week. How many commercials, slogans, thoughts, ideas, lessons and you have to try to process them every day. Wouldn’t it be great if life would get simpler?

How about your faith? You to church on Sunday and you hear a sermon. Hopefully, as you are leaving, you are trying to think about what you heard and how to apply it in your life. You jump in the car to head home and your son or daughter tells you they learned about Daniel and the Lions Den and they begin to ask you questions. To be honest, you don’t know the Bible really well, so you start wondering about the answers to your kid’s questions. You read your Bible on Monday and it is about something completely unrelated to anything you have been thinking about the last 24 hours. You head out to LIFE Group Monday or Tuesday evening and they are talking about something completely unrelated to what you heard Sunday or what you read Monday. You try to engage your mind and heart into the discussion, but it is really hard. You go home from LIFE Group and you are over saturated with ideas. Wednesday and Thursday you feel mentally fried. Sunday rolls back around and you struggle to get back out of bed to come back and hear a brand new message about a whole new idea that is just going to feel like one more think to try to process. Have you ever been there?

What is the answer? Simplify the process and tie it all together. I have been reading a book called "Made to Stick" and my buddy, Matt, has been reading one called "The Big Idea" and both have pointed us to the same thing. What most Americans need to grow in their faith is a simplification. We need to hear and wrestle with the same thing on Monday that we heard on Sunday. We need to talk about, try on and think about one thing at a time.

It may be that your faith could be dramatically changed by a simple commitment to simplify faith. If you could narrow it down to one idea at a time you would find yourself a whole lot further along in the process. My challenge to you is to do your part to make faith simple for those around you whether you are a mom, dad, teacher, church planter, leader or friend.