Sacrifice Over Entitlement

A deep and pervasive sense of entitlement exists in much of the Christian community. Those who have such an attitude, though they might not articulate it, assume that the church exists merely to meet their own or family needs. Therefore, the church that caters to such an ideology is forced to create all different kinds of programs to meet those ever-changing desires. A person or family might be happy for years but as soon as they or a family member grows into a different stage of life which has different needs then they expect that local church to provide it. If not, then they will leave. This happens all the time today.

Yet the Bible teaches not that the church exists to meet your needs, but rather that you exist to meet the needs of others. A heart of humility does not say “meet my needs,” but instead “do not cater to me. I am here to serve” attitude. In the end, the greatest need, felt or not, is for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And a community of people who embrace this practice/conviction between each other experience a partnership. In fact, Paul commends the Philippian Church (see Phil. 1:4-5) for this where as other churches like the Corinthian church definitely could not. Chapter 12 of Paul’s first letter definitely stressed the idea that God saves you to be apart of a larger family. Certainly we at Sandy Ridge recognize the legitimacy of needs and are here to serve those in need, but an attitude of entitlement, consumerism, self-serving definitely is at odds with true biblical service.