Healthy Tension

I'm learning more and more that certain things have to exist in a healthy tension with one another and that going to far in one direction disrupts the balance needed in an organization (or a life for that matter). 

Grace & Truth:  Jesus modeled this tension perfectly by confronting people with the truth which often made them candidates for His grace.  Paul worked hard to combat the legalism of truth without grace while James worked against the extreme of grace that breeds liberalism in behavior (faith w/o works is dead).

Control & Growth: Rick Warren said that you can either structure a church for control or growth but not both.  I believe many churches are too controlled by man and not by God.  The structure of many churches sets them up so they can't grow because they cannot make decisions without involving everyone under the sun and cumbersome committees.  Too often the church staff is held responsible for the church's "success" but not given the authority to take steps toward success.  I guarantee when the first church went from 120 to 3000 people in day there was a lack of 'man' control so God could bring growth.  However, having healthy and wise accountability and having enough control so decisions are not made in a vacuum is equally important (see Acts 6:1-7).

Clarity and Certainty:  We would love for things to be certain and for the Bible to address every situation under the sun, but that is not how life works.  Waiting for until you are certain something will work will probably leave you waiting way too long.  I'm learning that the level of certainty surrounding most decisions way less than 100% (which we'd like to have), but that you can be clear in the face of uncertain.   We can't wait for certainty (which we'll rarely have) before taking clear action.  We can let the clarity of our values, vision, and God's Word guide us to take action based on finite information with faith in an infinite God.

Church growth & Church health:  Is it all about the numbers?  Often times our interest is more in the statistics of a church over the spirit in that church.  Numbers and growth are important because they represent souls and people for whom Jesus died for and loves; however, a church can be big but unhealthy. Usually though, health will produce growth. Numbers can be a sign of health but they only tell part of the story.  The question is really what is going to be the bottom line: numbers or health?