Pastor Dave Bruskas:
One issue that hit home for me personally through Pastor Mark’s message on Sunday was the challenge to “have a Mary heart and Martha hands”. I have Martha proclivities and spent much of the message apologizing to my favorite Mary, who also goes by the name of Kara. But this means prioritizing worship (both private and public) in my life like Mary then planning for it to happen like Martha.
I think this has huge implications for us as a community. I have noticed recently many of our members inconsistently attend worship gatherings. There are good reasons to miss worship such as sickness and planned travel. So without creating legalistic rules, but with the hope of giving you a guideline for evaluation, let’s give some definition to “consistently”.
I think with a generous vacation plan to include 4 weeks a year and the healthy individual to be contagiously sick 2 Sundays per year, this would mean attending 46 out of 52 Sundays. Or missing one Sunday every other month. Please know that if your work causes you to miss worship from 9AM until 7PM Sunday, you really should consider finding another job that will allow you to be a part of community.
I would encourage you to discuss this in your Community Groups. Please don’t use this as a rigid rule to govern your life or to judge others. Rather, use it as a tool to expose how often you miss Sunday worship. If you find you aren’t “consistently” participating in public worship, then ask yourself “why?”. Then allow others to share what they see as you evaluate together with the intent to grow.
3 comments:
who gets 4 weeks of vacation? (besides teachers, I guess).
sife - i certainly don't!
this post hits home though, cuz we are pretty inconsistent for sunday mornings because we are so involved in our community (sunday nights for teaching and midweek stuff)... is it ok to skip more worship because you are so plugged-in in your neighborhood and at other gatherings? i suppose not.
Sunday morning seems to be satan's busiest time of week. Most of the guys I know who end up not going to church on Sunday for reasons other than vacation or contagious illness tell me they had every intention of going, but Sunday morning, they just couldn't bring themselves to go. They found it too easy to talk themselves out of it. This is a natural inclination that we must fight against.
God has ordained the most perfect means of grace for us in the preaching of His Word from the pulpit, the celebration of the sacraments, and the corporate assembly of the saints in worship and prayer. To miss this is to miss the biggest blessing that we have available every week. We need to guard against missing it.
Post a Comment