By Sam Akhigbe
In every relationship, weather in the circular word or among believers, the place of love can never be over emphasized, especially the agape kind of love. Agape love is the virtue of God in human nature that enables us to overlook individual weaknesses and major on their advantages (good side). It does not discriminate irrespective of personality, weather rich or poor, black or white, educated or illiterate, agape love will enable you to treat people the same way and relate freely. It is one of the virtues that promote unity and godliness among the people of God, but unfortunately most of us Christians have challenges in this area.
Has it ever occurred to you that new members come to church every Sunday, but majority of them never stay? Instead, some members of the church are pulling out to join other churches. Last year the youth executive became so worried about this issue to the point that they threw it open for members to send in their contributions in writing on how they think that new members can be attracted, developed and retained in the church.
In my own opinion, attracting people to church is not really the issue because, there are many ways people can be attracted to the house of God. For example, people can come to church by formal invitation through church evangelism, the quality of praise and worship, the message or sermon, the architectural masterpiece of the church like ours can also attract people without formal invitation. But the question now is; how can these people be retained when they come into the church?
When people come out of the world and enter the church, only to discover that what they see among believers is not different from where they are coming from, they will either go back or find their way to other places of worship. This has also accounted for the reason why some members will visit other churches and the will not come back. I will like to state here that interpersonal relationship among God's
people is key if we must experience increase in membership. Also the spiritual growth of the church will remain stunted until believers learn to relate freely with one another without discrimination. Acts 2:46 says: And they continue daily with one accord in the temple… the end of verse 47 says: and the lord added to their number such as should be saved be saved. (Not such as will come to the church today, and go back to the world after two weeks)
There is power in genuine love and there is also power in unity. The moment we learn to treat one another as one and member of the same body, church growth becomes inevitable. PF
…To be concluded
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