Spiritually Mature

As I approach graduation I received an interesting update in my inbox. I signed up to receive the Barna Groups updates and this months update was particularly interesting to me. If you do not know who the Barna Group is, they are Christian pollsters. Similar to other poll organizations except they focus on Christians and the problems that they face. This months release was on Spiritual Maturity. I have noticed how Christian churches are often very good at outreach and teaching. However, how do people know when they are spiritually mature? If you read the Barna update you will see that not only Christians, but church leaders had a difficult time pinning that down. It is no wonder that people who are in a church often feel like they are stagnant or not progressing. Let me be clear that salvation does not depend on spiritual maturity. However, if you come to Christ years before you leave this earth, you should be interested in how to become more spiritually mature. I am interested in how you look at spiritual maturity. If you would I would love to read what you think. Respond to this post or email me with your ideas. I will let those who respond know what I feel on the subject. The link to the Barna update is:

http://www.barna.org/barna-update

It is interesting reading.

God Bless,
Tim

Moving again

As many of you know we are moving to a different home yet again. The owners of the home we are renting are coming back in June so we had to find a different home to live in while we do our ministry. Renting seems to be the best option for us. One advantage is if one of us is out of the country doing a mission trip, and something major happens to the house, the landlord will be there to take care of it.
We started moving this weekend. Missi's mom and her good friend from Springfield came down to help. Since we have two full weeks to move we decided that this weekend we would paint a lot, and move the stuff that we could do without this week. Next week is the big move where we will move the furniture.
Keep us in your prayers during this period. We are still working on 3 overseas trips and 3 inner city mission trips that will be taking place between June 14 and Sept 21. Visit our web site for more info on them (www.balchfamilymissions.com).

Tim