Charles H. Spurgeon - Christian Competition

“First, even professed Christians may pursue desirable things by a wrong method. ‘Ye fight and war, yet ye have not.’ Have not churches tried to prosper by competing with other churches? We foolishly say, ‘At such and such a place of worship, they have a very clever minister; we must get a clever minister too. In fact, he must be a little cleverer than the other church’s hero. That is just what we need – a clever minister!’ How awful that we should live in an age in which we talk about clever ministers preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ! How sad that this holy service should be thought to depend on human cleverness!
Churches have competed with each other in architecture, music, apparel, and social status. In some cases, there is a measure of bitterness in the rivalry. It is not pleasant to small minds to see other churches prospering more than their own. Other congregations may be more earnest than we are, they may be doing God’s work better, but we are too apt to turn a jealous eye toward them. We would rather they did not get along quite so well. ‘Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?’ (James 4:5) If there were a disturbance among them that caused the church to break up and die, we would not rejoice. Of course not. But nor would we suffer any real sorrow.
In some churches an evil spirit lingers. God will never bless such means and such a spirit. Those who give way to them will desire to have but will never obtain.”