Congregational Passion

No committee at your church may ever have voted to lower the congregation’s expectations of God. A motion may never have reached your council urging you to abandon God or to forsake the task of being faithful witnesses, aggressively engaging the surrounding culture. Yet here you may be, lacking spiritual passion for today’s religious race. Loss of zeal for the Lord is not the fruit of one bad choice or the fault of certain people in the congregation. It is, instead, woven into the very culture of the organization and evident in many things we do or fail to do each week.

Congregations with low spiritual passion do not need to change everything. They do, however, need to realize that it is normal to feel good about faith. Further, they need to practice new behaviors that will shift their attitudes about prayer, scripture, and the sharing of their faith. The proof that the depression has lifted comes when they become enthusiastic about sharing who they are as a congregation with those around them who don’t have a church home.
--Bill Kemp, Ezekiel’s Bones: Rekindling Your Congregation’s Spiritual Passion

This is true at a personal level too. - Ed

Finding One's Mission

In the book Repacking Your Bags, authors Richard Leider and David Shapiro state that their research shows that the number one deadly fear of people is “Having lived a meaningless life.” Finding one’s mission, and then fulfilling it, is perhaps the most vital activity in which a person can engage.
--Laurie Beth Jones, The Path