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Attending to Priorities I'm concerned. Perhaps I shouldn't be. You let me know what the truth is. I don't have any statistics to back it up, but it looks like fewer and fewer people make an every-week commitment to church services and People Builders or other congregations these days. And if it's true, I don't know the reasons either. Perhaps it's the business of life -- work, family events, sporting events, vacations, or a myriad of miscellaneous happenings impinging on Sundays. Perhaps some genuinely sense they are not gaining what they need from our meetings together. Others simply make church meetings a lower priority among the choices of life. The ministry commitments which take class members elsewhere in the church or abroad are an excellent reason not to be involved in our classes. I face all this too. An outing with the family, allowing our child to attend a birthday party or play football on Sunday, or even a later-than-usual snooze sometimes nudge at me. But I call them "temptations." That's what they are. Do you agree? Personally, I don't always gets something out of Sunday's worship or sermon or fellowship or lesson (even when I teach myself!) But I always need to give something. And I gain for the future. In the same sense that my history or math lessons in school were not always immediately relevant, I still learned for the future. Commitment to be a regular part of the body sometimes stems from that kind of doing-it-now-for-the-future benefit. Despite today's pressures, I made a commitment many years ago that if I am humanly able, I will be in church servics every Sunday of my life. My parents made that commitment for me early and it became mine somewhere along the line. And I've found myself enriched when I make the special effort to keep that commitment all around the world. I've enjoyed the body of Christ in the only church I could find in Muslim-dominated Khartoum, Sudan. I've worhiped in a mud-brick, thatch-roof church with chickens running in and out in Zimbabwe and the next week in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. I've spent a grand Sunday morning in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and another with simple folk in Chaing-Mai, Thailand. I walked for blocks through Central Park to reach a famous church in New York City and have worshiped in churches with unknown saints all across the U.S. Church has been in airport chapels and outdoor parks. Meetings with thousands or with two or three. And the most important (though not always the most memorable) are the ones when I regularly worship and learn with the local body to which I am committed every week. All enrich my fellowship with the body of Christ, but they all cost me something in time or energy to make it. "Now, we don't want to get legalistic about this," some would remind me. That's true, Just to be there for being there's sake misses the point. The threats of mortal sins or hell or being looked down on by the community are not helpful. But I'm still concerned. Because what I have observed is that some who used to come to church meetings every week, begin to make it only three times a month, then two, then occasionally. And before I know it, people who were always here are never here. My fear of being legalistic or showing too much concern has sometimes allowed people to slip out unnoticed until it's too late. In my experience, those attendance patterns often reveal that something is wrong. Perhaps it's a direct spiritual health issue. Perhaps a physical or emotional problem, perhaps as simple but significant as a person just can't fit in anymore, or services slowly move to boredom. The middle ages also seem to bring up questions that we didn't expect: "We're not in church for the kids any longer, so why are we there?" "I'm not sure how God works in this stage of my life." "I haven't really been growing in my faith for some time, so what's the point?" The nagging questions are finally admitted to oneself but never vocalized to another person. Doubt has been there for some time and it may resolve itself in an apathy rather than blatant unbelief. This pattern of doubt has happened in PeopleBuilders. You would have never imagined it. But it happened. These doubts may be explained as a "doubt from lack of commitment" or a "doubt from lack of growth." They're subtle not sudden. They are gradual not grand. Doubts, when dealt with by God and in His Spirit-filled community, are not fatal. They may often strengthen a person to greater faith. But they have to be expressed or they eat away at the fabric of the faith. If you're tempted to give up, don't. If you need to recommit yourself to the body of Christ, do it. Just be there. We need one another. And we need to talk about it and see if any of these things are happening to you.
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