Six and a half days. What did you do in your last six and a half days? I suspect yours was much like mine. I went to work. Shuttled my kids to their activities in the evening and in my spare time got a little house work done. On Saturday I spent the morning getting some house work and projects done. On Saturday evening we went out to eat and enjoyed some family time. A somewhat typical week for me and I suppose for most of you.
I started this blog mostly to encourage myself and to provide a little accountability for myself to live life every day. It is easy to get stuck in a rut of daily activity and let life kind of take over. Before we know it five years have passed by and we haven’t lived life. Very little in our life has changed.
I am a sound guy. I love most types of music and I enjoy being behind a mixing console taking the individual sounds coming from the stage and crafting them and shaping them into a final product for everyone to enjoy. On most Sundays, I mix at church. I love this and am grateful for a place to be able to use what I enjoy to, in some way, make a positive difference in other people’s lives. But what about the other six and a half days? Have we forgotten what we are here for? Have we forgotten what church is about?
Many of our churches use the majority of their resources to support that half day each week. Our pastors spend much of their time studying and preparing for their lesson. The children’s ministry teams, worship teams, maintenance and cleaning of the buildings, preparing the bulletins and hand outs and all the other paid staff and volunteers that invest their time into making that one morning each week the best it can be. I have mixed at churches that have invested millions of dollars in their audio/video/lighting systems that are only used for a few hours most weeks. Many church buildings across America sit empty most of the week. As a nation, we invest billions of dollars and countless hours preparing for that first half a day of each week.
What if we began to change things up a bit? What if our churches decided that there is more to life than Sunday morning? What if we began to invest more of our time and resources into the community? What if my typical week was more than making my life better and time was invested in making someone else’s life better. What if I began to live my life every day? I suspect our would would look very different and our churches would begin to fill up as Christians get out of the church building and out of our comfort zones and get into the communities we live in and begin to serve people. Preaching the Gospel and talking about Christ and the church is good, but we need to do less talking about the Good News and spend more time being the Good News.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word
but does not do what it says is like someone
who looks at his face in a mirror
and, after looking at himself,
goes away and immediately forgets
what he looks like. But whoever looks
intently into the perfect law that gives freedom,
and continues in it—not forgetting
what they have heard,
but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
James 1:22-25
It is good to work to improve our own lives and the lives of our families, but it is even better to work to improve the lives of others.
What are you going to do in the next Six and a half Days?
