How can reformation in the church or family be handled poorly?

Paul Carrington explains in this video that reformation in the church or family can be handled poorly when we as fathers or leaders make changes without any communication. We must communicate the “why” behind what we are asking our family or church to do. We must lay the groundwork and explain why we are making changes. We shouldn’t make changes just for the sake of change.

It does go back to our heart – why are we making changes? If we start without Christ at the center, we will run into numerous problems. We ought to have everything stem out of a love for Christ. Reformation should flow out of a heart to please God.

Ephesians 5:2 (NKJV) – “And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.”

I think Reformation is handled poorly whether it's in the family or in the church when we approach it with this zeal of just running full board 150 miles per hour without any communication. So I just sit my family down one night and say we're gonna sit quietly for 20 minutes while I read the Bible and you know if you move son there's gonna be a problem. And I think the same thing can be happening in a church where a church sees something but without communicating the why behind it and why this is so critical. In other words, we're getting the doing down before explaining the why behind it. We can run shipwreck very, very quickly.

And I think as leaders, whether in a family or in a church, we want to spend time really laying the groundwork as to why we are going to be making these changes, why it is so critical. And we're not making change just for the sake of change. We need to be people like we see in the book of Revelation, when the Lord Jesus talks about, you know, you've done many wonderful things to the church of Ephesus, but he says this, he says, you've forgotten your first love. We need to maintain Jesus Christ as our first love in the family and in the home and love towards one another. And when we do that and we repent and do our first works, we will find ourselves on good footing.

It really is, Aside from just doing outward things and fixing, you know, repainting the building, so to speak, spiritually, it really does go back to heart. Where is the heart? What's the heartbeat that's driving the change? And if we start off with just the scaffolding and other things without Jesus Christ at the center. I think before long we're going to run into many different problems.

Let everything be born from a love to Christ and a desire to please Him because everything else we can do without love to Christ as we see in 1 Corinthians. You can give your body to be burned without Jesus Christ but when Jesus Christ is the very heartbeat and it's our desire to please him and that is what maintains our works and our efforts to reform I think we'll find ourselves in a really good spot even if there's wars and fighting and struggles we'll find ourselves in a very good spot as a family or as a church.