October 07, 2013
Measure of a Church
The change of seasons, holidays and the start of school can
all cause a burp in the church attendance graph. I’ve noticed that most of us use
attendance for taking the pulse of the church and it determines whether we think
we are healthy, sick or coming down with something. It’s interesting that when
the Lord spoke to the seven churches in Revelation, not one of the churches
were evaluated on the basis of how many people were in attendance at their
worship service. The Lord didn’t say, ‘To the angel of the church in Montrose write:
I have this against you…you have let your numbers dwindle’.
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Gail;
-----Concepts come washing across my mind like breakers onto a beach. The process has always fascinated me. The first time a concept rolls in, it’s charged with exuberant, “Eureka!” Yet it also carries as much mystery and bewilderment, if I’m very lucky, and even more, usually. Then it flows out and is gone as another washes over the marks it left upon my mind’s beach. In my earlier years I would pine its leaving, never understanding why it came if it had to just turn around and go, even though I knew from a feeling in my heart that it would return again. And then, one day, amongst the succession of conceptual waves rolling in and flowing out, here it comes, bringing a bit more of its own insight to add to what my beach had been able to retain of the impression it had made before. At fifty-nine, I’ve learned to relish the going of a concept as much as its coming, savoring the marks it leaves, guarding them for its return. I understand the coming and going much more. I’m confident this is so normal that you can relate to what I’m saying.
-----And it’s not just concepts that wash up and roll off the beaches of our minds. There are also the more expansive tides of attitudes and moods and seasons. Year in and year out the general day after day things to which we must attend change with the portion of the year we’re in. Start of school, as you say, Thanksgiving, and especially Christmas all season our minds and schedules as they approach. Not so much does New Years, but then comes the end of the school year bearing an offering of Summer fun. They’re all rather cultural tides bringing in similar breakers, washing everyone’s beaches with a general sameness for surrounding their particular differences. And so people go off doing their busy things, for life is busy. And the big most of that is outside the church building.
-----Some people wash away into the seasons, tending their breakers of the Lord less and less, having not guarded His marks upon their beaches, having failed to savor them. Others roll out of the church doors pining their misfortune of not being able to return the following week or more, savoring that week’s marks upon their shores. They’ll come rolling back in good order. Like you say, the health of a church is not shown by its numbers, at least not in any particular season. It is secreted away in the guards set for the savored marks of the Word’s truths and ways and particular expressions of life rolling in and receding off all its beaches.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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