What exactly is a church program? I'll try giving a few shots at defining it. It is a manmade method of producing results that the church desires. It is an effort to break the moving of God into steps and reproducing them. It is how the church decides how to conduct things when God is not providing the information we want.

In other words, a church program is the church operating without God leading the way. It is the church working how it wants and asking God to follow. Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship, Evangelism; they all, apart from the direction of God, fall into programs and ultimately become ineffective. That really begs the question though. Why do we do it?

How does everyone try to get to God apart from Jesus? They attempt to do so by their own efforts. Human beings are proud and we want to do things on our own. Even after we are saved, by none of our own effort, and given the Spirit, also not by our effort, part of us wants to feel that we did something on our own. A program lets us do just that. Programs are by our efforts and even though they don't produce lasting results, they give us the illusion of production.

We need to adopt the mentality that we really can't do anything apart from the calling of God. If he doesn't call us to do it, it's not necessary. Our programs are not being effective so rather than constantly reorganizing them, we should be getting rid of them and asking God what he wants from us.