How Should a Church Handle Growth? | Growing Pains | Acts 6:1-7 | with Pastor Joshua Sanders

Have you ever had a moment when your shoes felt tighter than they used to? Or have you had that moment where you realized your favorite shirt doesn’t fit anymore? And it’s not that our shoes or shirt shrunk... It’s that we grew! You see, growth is a natural, healthy part of life. But it’s not always comfortable, is it? When our kids are growing, they can tend to have what the medical experts call growing pains. Their muscles and joints may hurt, because they are growing. And in our walk with Christ and as a church community, we can quite often experience something similar. There are moments when we feel some pain when our routines and spaces no longer fit the expanding reach of our congregation and our mission. As a Church, we can experience growing pains. These growing pains can manifest in many ways... They can be physical, like needing more space for our Sunday Gatherings. They can be relational, as we learn to embrace new members and diverse perspectives. And they can be spiritual, as God challenges us to step out of our comfort zones and into new territories of faith and service. And in this sermon we are diving into Acts 6:1-7. And in this passage, we will see the church experience more and more Gospel-centered growth. But what we will see is that while the early church was experiencing growth, they were experiencing the growing pains that can come with growth. Luke in these verses describes the blessings and the challenges that can come with church growth. And what we will learn in this sermon is that as we GET AFTER IT for the expanding of the Kingdom of God, we will experience some growing pains.