When the Order Matters

Introduction

This testimony gathers convictions first written years ago and carries them forward without argument or defense. What follows is not a manifesto, a method, or a corrective for others—but a witness to what I once believed, what life has refined, and what I still hold quietly true. It is offered as a single, integrated reflection, meant to stand on its own.

When the Order Matters

A Testimony

There was a season of my life when I was deeply concerned with the Church.

Not casually concerned. Not cynically critical. I loved the Church. I served her. I believed she carried the hope of the world. And because of that love, I found myself increasingly troubled by what I saw happening within her walls.

At the time, the conversation everywhere was about how to do church better—how to attract people, how to retain them, how to grow. Conferences promised answers. Books offered formulas. Strategies multiplied. Success was measured in numbers, budgets, and momentum.

Much of it made sense. Some of it even worked.

But something in me remained unsettled.

It felt as though we were obsessively rearranging the exterior of the house while neglecting its foundation. We were working tirelessly to bring unbelievers into our gatherings, while quietly assuming that believers would somehow form on their own. Evangelism had become the responsibility of the institution, not the people. Faith was increasingly something we attended, not something we lived.

I didn’t know it then, but what I was responding to was an issue of order.

Hunger Before Strategy

Long before I ever tried to articulate these thoughts, I had been shaped by hunger—first in prayer.

When I first fell in love, conversation was effortless. We spoke constantly, not because it was disciplined, but because it was desired. Over time, I learned that intimacy does not survive neglect. Love must be returned to again and again, or it quietly erodes.

Prayer, I came to believe, worked the same way.

Not as obligation. Not as performance. But as the natural language of relationship. When prayer becomes secondary, God does not withdraw—but we do. And what follows is not rebellion, but distance.

I began to notice that much of what passed for Christian life was lived at a distance from God—busy, sincere, and strangely hollow.

Truth as Nourishment, Not Ammunition

From prayer, my attention turned to Scripture.

The earliest Christians did not treat teaching as optional enrichment. They devoted themselves to it. They understood that truth was not merely information—it was life. And yet, somewhere along the way, we had decided that knowing Scripture deeply was unnecessary as long as someone else did.

We filled our lives with spiritual noise and wondered why we were starving.

At the same time, we often taught Scripture in ways that produced fear rather than freedom. We emphasized behavior over identity, effort over transformation. We spoke often of grace, yet quietly communicated that God’s acceptance was fragile—easily forfeited by failure.

The result was predictable: believers who were quiet, cautious, unsure of their standing with God, afraid to speak of a faith they were not convinced was truly working.

I began to believe that we were teaching people how to try harder, instead of teaching them who they were in Christ.

Fellowship That Costs Something

Then there was fellowship—another word we had softened until it meant almost nothing.

Christian fellowship was never meant to be religious socializing. It was not defined by the absence of certain behaviors, but by the shared presence of God. It required honesty, vulnerability, generosity, and mutual strengthening. It cost time. It cost comfort. Sometimes it cost pride.

The early Church did not gather to be entertained. They gathered to be formed—to remind one another who God was, who they were, and what they were called to live out in the world.

Where God was not central, fellowship dissolved into something indistinguishable from any other gathering.

Ministry as Overflow

From prayer, truth, and fellowship flowed ministry—not as a program, but as an inevitability.

In the book of Acts, ministry happens while people are on their way to pray. It happens in streets and homes. It happens because ordinary people, filled with the presence of God, encounter human need and respond with what they have.

“Silver and gold I do not have,” Peter says, “but what I have I give you.”

That sentence haunted me.

Ministry was not about offering what people wanted—it was about offering what God had already given. Healing, generosity, courage, proclamation—all of it flowed naturally from lives reordered around God.

No one needed to be convinced to evangelize. They were simply living visibly changed lives.

When Evangelism Is Forced, Something Is Broken

By this point, I had reached a conclusion that felt obvious to me then and still does now:

When the Church is rightly formed, evangelism happens.

It doesn’t need to be engineered. It doesn’t need to be marketed. It doesn’t need to be outsourced to professionals.

But when we reverse the order—when attraction replaces formation, when growth replaces depth—we produce believers who feel little responsibility for the world around them. Faith becomes something to invite others into rather than something to carry out.

And our communities suffer for it.

What I Didn’t Know Then

What I didn’t understand at the time was how easy it is to speak clearly before being humbled.

I believed deeply in these convictions. I still do. But I underestimated how much truth can wound when it is carried without gentleness—and how much clarity can coexist with blindness to one’s own fragility.

I did not yet know how deeply I would need grace myself.

Life has a way of teaching what books cannot. Failure reveals what certainty conceals. And over time, I learned that being right does not exempt us from being broken.

What changed was not the order—but my posture.

What Remains

I still believe the Church does not need better strategies as much as it needs deeper formation.

I still believe prayer, truth, fellowship, worship, and ministry must be central—not peripheral.

I still believe evangelism is the fruit of a people who have encountered God, not the result of a well-designed program.

But I no longer believe these truths must be shouted to be heard.

Now, I offer them as witness, not argument.

Because I have learned that the Church is not healed by being corrected, but by being returned—again and again—to the presence of God.

And I am learning—slowly—that this matters more than I once knew.