Not an Option

A couple of weeks ago, early Sunday morning, I stopped at Gas N Goodies to get a Diet Coke before heading to Onida to start my round of church services.  As I pulled in, there was a pickup pulling a boat that was pulling out.  That's not an unusual sight around here, of course.  As I watched them leave, I thought, "Well, I guess that guy's not going to church today."

But as I thought about it, I wondered.  Was that someone who ever went to church?  Don't get me wrong, I have no idea who it was.  That's not the point.  But I thought, "I wonder if that person even considered going to church today.  I wonder, when he was planning his weekend, whether going to church was even something he considered to be one of his options.”

I have no way of knowing--again, I have no idea who it was.  But for an awful lot of people, even around here, that’s the case.  There’s a large number of people like that, even in our little communities.  A large number of people who, when they’re planning their weekends, don’t even think about the possibility of going to church.  A large number of people who don’t even consider attending church as one of their options for the weekend.

That doesn’t necessarily make them bad people or anything.  It does not even make them unChristian.  But I suspect, for a substantial number of them, Christian faith is not something they think about very much.  Some may, but a lot probably don’t.  They would probably claim to be Christians, if asked, but they don’t allow their Christian faith to impact their lives to any significant degree.

That’s a problem for many people who do attend church, too.  But if we attend church regularly, we at least are making some attempt to allow our faith to impact our lives.  Even if it’s only for one hour a week, that’s still better than zero hours a week.  Our goal should be higher than that, obviously, but something, even a minimal something, is still better than nothing.

When we talk about reaching people for Christ, this is a problem.  For many people, just the idea of coming to church is a foreign concept.  They probably know someone who attends church, but there’s a good chance that it’s not someone they know well, not someone they consider a close friend.  Because of that, they don’t even think about coming to church on Sunday.  It’s not even on their radar screen.  They’re not against the idea of church, necessarily.  They just think of it as something for other people.  It’s not something for them.

How do we get people to come to church when coming to church is not even something that’s on their radar screen?  I don’t know.  I wish I had an answer.  I’ve heard a lot of “experts” talk about it, but there’s no simple, easy solution.  If there was, we’d all be using it and the problem wouldn’t exist.  

What I know, though, is that we have to keep trying.  Even if we don’t have an answer, we have to keep trying.  Even if we feel like we don’t know what we’re doing, even if we feel like we don’t have a clue how to do this, we have to keep trying.

If we don’t keep trying, if we give up and quit, we know what will happen.  Nothing.  If we do keep trying, even ineptly, well, maybe we’ll stumble into an answer.  And you know what?  God just may help us do that.  God wants us to reach these people, you know.  God wants us to bring them into the church.  So if we keep trying, and if we ask God for help, God just might bless our efforts, as feeble as they may be.  And something might happen.  Maybe something good.  Maybe even something better than we ever imagined.

Maybe not, too.  That’s up to God.  But the point is that we need to keep trying.  No matter what the situation is, we need to continue to be faithful to God and to do our best to serve God.  God can use our best, even when our best isn’t very good, in all kinds of awesome ways when God chooses to do that.

So keep trying.  Keep trying to reach people for God.  Let’s see what God does when we do.