When I Grow Up - Part 2: Maturity

A few days ago I started sharing a series of posts about what we want Timber Ridge Church to look like once we "grow up." You can read about the idea here and you can read part 1 here.

Today I want to share about our core value of teaching the Bible for life transformation. At Timber Ridge Church, our desire is to teach the Bible - through our weekend services, small groups, and other avenues - in order that people's lives might be changed. That means that as a church, we will measure success by life transformation. The trend in some churches today is to measure success and growth by Bible knowledge. Some churches are consumed with how much of the Bible their people know. But the problem that creates is that in most cases this produces spiritually obese Christians who gorge themselves on knowing the Word, but don't practice it and do what it says. Don't get me wrong - I believe that people need to know God's Word. I believe God gave us the Bible as our playbook & blueprint for life. But biblical maturity is not measured by how much Bible you know. Maturity is measured by how much Bible you do. At Timber Ridge Church we want to measure our success and our growth by Bible action, not Bible knowledge.

With that core value in place, we have the desire to be a church that is strong in it's spiritual maturity. That maturity will be shown not in the number of verses we can quote or the number of Bible study classes we can schedule. Our maturity will be shown in how we practice God's Word in sharing our faith, loving our neighbors, caring for the poor, and living out the commands God gives us in His Word.