Why Is My Congregation Not Feeling Right?
“He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” — Micah 6:8
I recently began watching Abide In Me ( A.I.M ) Radio on YouTube. The Christian sister there speaks my language.
There has never been a time when my congregation felt like a living body. A place where kindness lingered in the air like incense, and where humility walked in quietly, not needing to announce itself.
We gathered not just to be counted but to count for something; to bring warmth into one another’s lives and to worship the God who sees the heart. But something changed. Something vital slipped through our fingers as we became more obsessed with numbers, growth, and headcounts.
Micah 6:8 is both a rebuke and an invitation. It's not a complicated verse. It doesn’t ask for doctrinal gymnastics or constant updates to theological policies. It simply asks for three things: justice, kindness, and humility. In that order. A moral taught us to be human in a Godly way from the days of the Hebrew prophets. But somewhere along the way, those words became too soft, too subtle for a culture chasing measurable success and sweeping organisational sin under the carpet. Numbers became our proof of blessing, our evidence of truth, our substitute for Micah 6:8.
The more we clung to outcomes, the more we forgot the inward journey. I saw elders grow sharper in discipline but duller in compassion. I watched brothers speak of “God’s arrangement” with an icy detachment that betrayed no love. I heard phrases like “theocratic order” used not to inspire but to silence. And yet, the poor, the doubters, the wanderers—those Jesus would have met on the road—were quietly pushed out or told to sit down and “be obedient.”
But obedience without love is just performance. And a performance will eventually wear thin.
What Micah reminds us of is that God doesn't change His standards. Not these ones. He doesn’t measure our righteousness by the number of hours we preach or by how well we enforce rules. He looks for the fragrance of mercy in our dealings with each other. He watches how we treat the ones who’ve fallen behind. He listens for humility in our speech, not just in our prayers.
I must ask myself: is my congregation lost in numbers because it fears the uncertainty of grace? Grace doesn’t tally. It doesn’t rank. It flows. It's dangerous to institutions that rely on control, but it is the very thing that makes us human in the sight of God. It’s dangerous to Christians to worship the organisation and pay lip service to God like company people.
Micah’s call is not just a warning—it is a way home. “Act justly.” Not when it’s convenient or aligns with policy, but always. When it hurts. “Love mercy.” Not tolerate it. Love it. Seek it like treasure. And “walk humbly with your God.” Not ahead of Him, dictating the terms. Not behind Him, reluctant and self-righteous. But with Him. In step. Like Enoch did.
So many congregations today have become administrative machines rather than spiritual families. That is why people leave—not because they lack faith, but because they no longer recognise the God they came to know in Scripture.
I am one of them. Not faithless, but heartsick. Longing not for a religion of reports, but a faith of radiant mercy. And I know I’m not alone. There are others who still believe in Micah’s words, not as a slogan, but as a heartbeat. Who know that true worship isn’t measured by volume or speed, but by the presence of justice, mercy, and humility among us.
God is not interested in our ever-changing metrics. He’s not impressed by our spiritual spreadsheets. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever—and He calls us back. Not to performance, but to personhood. To being truly human. To walking again in the dust of the prophets, in the footsteps of Jesus, and into the arms of the Father who never stopped caring about how we treat one another.
Micah 6:8 is not a verse to recite. It’s a mirror. And if we dare to investigate it, really look, we might just find our way again—not as an institution, but as a congregation of the heart.
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