What Churches Need
I have a number of friends who are in the initial stages of planting a new church in various communities around the world. Conversations with them have led me to remember our early days and how desperately we prayed this passage in the early years of our church.
Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
–Exodus 33:12-17
Here’s Moses’ prayer: “God, show me your ways!” Moses is leading a rebellious people toward the Promised Land and he’s unsure how it’s going to get done. (This scene takes place right after the golden calf incident of chapter 32.)
Churches pray that prayer over and over and over again. God, what should we do? This program? New building? Staff hiring? Show us your ways! God’s answer: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
What churches need more than programs, buildings, new staff, fancy flyers, and even dynamic leadership is the presence of God.
Moses gets that and ends up praying, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.” It is the presence of Almighty God that will distinguish the people of God.
So what’s your prayer? Is it, “God, tell me what to do. Clarify things. Show the way.” I don’t think that’s a bad prayer. Moses isn’t reprimanded for it. But do your prayers focus on “God, go with us.” That’s the prayer that understands our dependance on God’s sovereign hand more than our strategies and vision and leadership and ideas and abilities.