100 Days to a Healthier ChurchSample

Day 19 

Today’s Big Idea: Consider what you may need to change. Yesterday you reflected on how your feelings about the church are changing. Today you go deeper. In addition to your feelings about the church, it’s important to look at how those feelings have resulted in actions and what the consequences of those actions have been. What role have you played in creating the church’s current culture? Were you enforcing a bad culture without realizing it? If so, what might you be called to do to help change it?

Key Verse: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13).

Thoughts to Consider: The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector is a tricky passage. Every time we read it, it feels like one of those “Gotcha!” moments. We want to sit in quiet judgment of the Pharisee, but the moment we do that, we start thinking, “I’m glad I’m not like that Pharisee” and we prove how much of a Pharisee we really are.

So let’s pay attention to the tax collector instead. As much as everyone hates paying taxes, the Roman system of taxation and collection was so much worse than we can imagine. Like Zacchaeus from Day 11, this man’s job consisted of cheating people, selling out his own countrymen, and enriching himself to support an oppressive regime. But something had happened to him. He had come to an awareness of his sin and arrived at the temple to repent. He knew he needed to change, and his repentance was accepted by God.

What do we need to change? Have we been willing participants in creating an unhealthy culture in our congregation? We need to be careful here, because if we think we haven’t, we might find ourselves to be more like the Pharisee than we’d like to admit.