October 23, 2009
Reserved
It’s not unusual to see motor homes and trucks camping overnight in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Normally the big rigs park on one side of the massive lot, however the other morning there was a motor home that was obviously out of place. When the occupants bedded down for the night I doubt that they expected to wake up the next morning completely surrounded by cars and trucks belonging to commuters and employees. Unknowingly the travelers had set up camp where the local residents always park. And the locals didn’t cut the visitors any slack; they just squeezed into their regular spots right up next to the motor home. It sort of reminds me of how we park ourselves in our pew at church…heaven help the visitor who tries to park in our space.
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Gail;
-----Several years ago, Char said she didn’t want to sit in the same place in church anymore. She said she wanted to bounce around so we could get acquainted with more people. It is so easy to just go to the same area you sit every Sunday. You don’t have to think about where you want to sit. You and the people who sit around the same area are all used to each other. And you don’t have to wonder if you are imposing on anyone else’s place. But what could I say to her? Those excuses don’t cut it. She was right. So I agreed and obeyed. After several years of our new habit, I really don’t feel much more acquainted with many more people. Now I have been more seriously contemplating my social skills and casting a suspicious eye on old attitudes that I have hid behind to save myself from being known by strangers.
-----It is funny how a slight change of habit, like where you sit, can ripple through the heart. It is also funny how close the idea of sitting in the same seat at church every Sunday relates to the idea of going to the same church every Sunday. The time you leave home, the route you take to get there, even where you park when you get there are the same every Sunday. That eliminates a lot of decisions. Then there is another major decision eliminated by attending a regular church - what is being taught and done. The regulars of any church attend it largely because they all share similar beliefs and service interests, that way they are all used to each other and can feel accepted amongst each other. Moreover, you don’t have to feel like some of your beliefs might impose upon others when they became known. Therefore, the main point of the brotherhood - fellowship - gets sidestepped to accommodate the secondary point - doctrinal subtleties. Fellowship then becomes so bound by differences that it becomes almost a synonym referring to a particular church. And that is exactly the party spirit Paul addressed in Romans and I Corinthians.
-----I will always contend that a slight change of habit, like where you attend church would have a rippling effect throughout the community, that is, if it were practiced by most. We all know that the church we attend is not the whole body of the Lord, but do we really know like we ought to know? We meet others of different churches on the street and fellowship with them there, but we are not willing to go worship with them because individual philosophies have been drug to the podium where they do not belong. And that fragments the depths of fellowship within the community. And the world sees that fragmentation and considers the church to be nothing more than another institutionalized human effort to fulfill the god need of the heart.
-----But here we are. So here we must do our best. And I bounce around within one church wondering if whether I got my sociability act together there, maybe God would see me as being faithful enough in that little to give us more.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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