Idol-atry-ize-ing: Questions

So have you made your church (or church growth) into an idol? I’ll give you some clarifying questions, but first let’s revisit our definition of idolatry:

“… anyone or anything from which you and I try to acquire life, value and meaning – outside of the true God – is a false god. Therefore, those positive behaviors aimed at generating life and acceptability for us are sins. So even though what we do may be right, the reason why we do it is idolatrous,” (Jeff Vanvondervan, Tired of Trying to Measure Up, p 101)

So, questions:

1. Is your day better if your attendance at your weekend service(s) is high?
2. Do you find yourself fantasizing about what God might do in your church more than you find yourself praying to God?
3. When something good happens in your church are you upset if a lot of people don’t know about it?
4. Do you feel like a failure when you offer an invitation and no one (or very few people) respond? (Like you’re the one who changes people’s hearts, not God…)
5. Do you find yourself being secretly jealous of “more successful” pastors and lustful of their churches?
6. Do you feel like God “owes you” church growth, because of all you’ve done for Him?
7. When you’re with other pastors, if things are going well at your church do you hope people ask, but if things are going poorly do you hope they won’t?
8. Do you skip spending time with God because you have too much work to do for the church?

Honesty time: Have you made an idol of your church or of church growth?