When growing up and later when I pastored churches, our weekly service schedule included Sunday School, Sunday morning and evening services, Wednesday night Bible study, and often we attended protracted revival meetings that many times lasted two weeks – none less than three nights.
This was the typical church culture in most evangelical churches until about 2010. I’m speaking in generalities in case your church culture was different from the above-scheduled services.
Now, many evangelical churches hold Sunday morning services only. The purpose of this blog is not to attack church culture, but to sound a warning against the gross disconnection I see in the American Christian community. I’ll leave the actual service schedule statistics up to the Barna Group!
I feel compelled to sound a clarion call. God’s people have been duped! I too now conduct one service a week, so my point here is not to criticize other churches. However, in the process, I have come to realize that the enemy has successfully – over time – stolen the affections of God’s people away from the house of God. I don’t care about the reasons why – legitimate or illegitimate – the fact is that many of God’s people have pulled their affections and attention toward lesser pursuits when it comes to regular church attendance. The church’s most formidable enemy, Satan, must surely be laughing at this gross disconnection. And I’m not gullible enough to believe that all Christians attended more than one service when they were available. I’ve pastored six churches. I know. Sunday evenings and Wednesday evenings have been sparsely attended for years; however, the fact remains: they were available on the church calendar.
Now to my overriding point. One service a week does not provide ample time or opportunities for God’s people to connect. So, when believers see this one service as optional, they over time become completely disconnected from the very life source that brought them to saving faith. These people would do well not to blame the church for any feelings of disconnection. We get what we put into it. And before you say it, many Christians can and do read the Scriptures from home, but many do not. Perhaps even most do not. We are a scripturally illiterate culture.
It’s time to quit kidding ourselves. Unless we make regular church attendance a priority, unless we become involved in small group studies, unless we take the initiative to fellowship with other Christian families during the week, unless we regularly share our faith with others, Christianity will continue to fade into a subculture in this country.
True born-again Christians everywhere need to wake up and realize the seriousness of this hour. If we’ve ever needed to reassess our priorities, today is the day! Don’t allow the enemy to steal your affections away from God’s house and God’s people. Oh, please give my thoughts your prayerful consideration.
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