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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Yet Another Church Meeting My friend once invited a couple that he had just met over to his house for a visit. He had suggested a particular night, but they couldn't visit that night due to a church service. So he suggested another night. Once again, that night was taken up with a church meeting. It seemed that my friend could not get together with this couple any night of the week because they were too busy with church meetings. Now I am sure pastors would love this type of commitment and church based activities by their people. Yet I wonder what kind of exposure such people have to anyone outside of the church. The same friend told me that he likes being involved in non church groups and functions since it keeps him in touch with the world, and keeps him close to non Christians. By doing this he felt that his life as a Christian could be seen by non Christians. This is a very good idea, but impossible if all of our spare time is spent in church. Really the term, "in church" that we use all of the time is not Scriptural. We don't go to church. We are not in church. We are the church. We are the church that expresses itself to the world, not to each other. I myself have attended close to 10,000 church meetings in my 51 years on earth. That is about 20,000 hours of my life has been sitting in a church meeting. That's more than 833 days, or 119 weeks. Now that's a lot of meetings. To be honest, sometimes I get tired of going to meetings. I am sure that I am not the only one who feels this way. The problem is that many of us who merely just go and sit in a meeting, or listen, or even worship in a meeting should be elsewhere else leading a meeting. Or even better still, should be elsewhere doing God's work outside the context of a church meeting. Instead of simply going to a meeting, we need to be more involved in doing something. That is what Christian growth is all about. Granted, we can grow as Christian in a church service, but I think most of our growth comes by going out and doing our Lord's work. I believe a life of doing is more fulfilling than a life of attending more meetings. Way too often we go to church to get from God. We should want to give to Him and others, not simply get. Maybe the doing is leading a meeting. Yet maybe it is doing other things, like feeding people in a food bank, or even going to a secular gathering to be a good witness of our Lord. Yes, we should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, but look at Paul's life. I think he spent more time doing the work of the Lord than simply attending meetings. This is just something to think about. What is the ratio between church meetings and work of the Lord activities that you are presently doing. For every hour you spend in a church meeting getting fed, how many hours are you out doing the work of the Lord.
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