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A Note from the Preacher…Larry Sweeney

        I highly recommend a careful reading of the following article. It was written by Mike Greene, preacher for the Elizabethtown Church of Christ. By way of introduction, I want to remind you of two of the Proverbs:

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)
“A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance.” (Proverbs 15:13)
Positive Thinking!
        Dr. Ralph Mohney told of a double-bind experiment which was conducted in the San Francisco Bay area. The principal of a school called 3 professors together and said, “Because you three teachers are the finest in the system and you have the greatest expertise, we're going to give you 90 selected high-IQ students. We're going to let you move these students through this next year at their pace and see how much they can learn.” Everyone was delighted - faculty and students alike.
        The professors and the students thoroughly enjoyed themselves over the next year; professors teaching the brightest students; students benefiting from close attention and instruction.
        By the end of the experiment the students had achieved from 20-30% more than the other students in the whole San Francisco Bay area. The principal called the teachers in and told them, “I have a confession to make. I have to confess that you did not have 90 of the most intellectually prominent students. They were run-of-the-mill students. We took 90 students at random from the system and gave them to you.”
        The teachers said, “This means that we are exceptional teachers.”
        The principal continued, “I have another confession. You're not the brightest of the teachers. Your names were the first three names drawn out of a hat.”
                 The teachers asked, “What made the difference? Why did 90 students perform at such an exceptional level for a whole year?”
        The answer, of course, is because of the teacher's expectations.
        If it is true that our expectations affect others and our attitudes affect the outcome of our endeavors, it stands to reason the same would hold true in the work of the church. If we expect a program to fail, a worship service to be uninspiring, a sermon to be boring, the singing to be poor, this person to be unresponsive to the gospel, and this church to fail to grow, then it will!
        If our attitude toward the elders, preacher, members, work, future, worship, non-members or anything else is negative, it will affect the outcome in a negative way. Solomon said it long ago: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)
        No one would argue that positive attitudes and expectations are substitutes for the actual doing of the work or the preaching of the gospel. But human nature being what it is, those attitudes and expectations can be the deciding factor in the success or failure of any endeavor. In view of that, it would be healthy for each of us to do some serious expectation and attitude examination with respect to the work of the church and our role in it as well as life in general. -Mike Greene