One Third On Any Given Sunday

One of our ministers gave us an interesting stat in staff meeting recently. On any given Sunday one third of your regular church family will not be at church! WOW...one third!! Another sad stat is a faithful church attender is considered to be faithful if they attend at least twice a month.

I would definitely call that "lowering the bar" in churches today! I realize we live incredibly hectic busy mind-numbing strength zapping lives and schedules...with a lot of that being our fault in decisions and priorities we have made. We try to defy the time continuum by squeezing in activities, games, work, leisure, grocery shopping, yard care, piano lessons, soccer practice, dance, paper route, homework, dinner....and oh yeah...church if there is any time LEFT OVER.

Now if I sound like a sour grapes pastor you would be wrong...dead wrong! However, I am a burdened pastor/shepherd concerned about Believers just cramming God in as one more thing on the To Do list. God does not deserve the short end of the stick!! He does deserve first place in our time and priorities don't you think?? Because if church attendance is treated this way then more than likely personal daily quiet time with the Lord is treated this way too. Then our quest for the American dream gets in the way of real intimacy and worship with Christ!

I would love to see TV viewing, ball games, or Sunday trips to Dollywood get the left overs in our life...and Jesus get the best of our strength, energy and passion. Hebrews 10:22-25 says,
22 let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him. For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. 23Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. 24 Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. 25And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near.