The amount I allow low-attendance Sundays to mess with me is truly obscene. It rattles me.
No, it more than rattles me. It gets inside me and careens around in my skull, each richochet taking out just a little bit more of my confidence...
I know it's not right... I've known it for 3 years now. I'm just telling you what is.
Weeks when we're down by 25% are a sure way to get me to wake up in a cold sweat at 3 in the morning... usually with very specific people on my mind, people who seem to be drifting away, some just from our community and some from God Himself. I think about people like that a lot, but it hits kind of a boiling point in my mind the Sunday night/Monday morning after a Sunday when I find myself saying some stupid things to a smaller-than-usual number of people (funny how those go together a lot for me, how one brings out the other).
I know that Sunday is not the center of our community, not our reason for existence, and yet- it's this piece that brings cohesion to our community and helps us feel like one people- and other than the baptisms we ask everyone to come to, the only time we're all together.
And I know this is the middle of summer with a lot of people out and about, traveling, enjoying the sun...
The temptation for me is to wake up on nights like this and start to hit the to-do list, outlining all the things I'm going to do and change and adjust to make things better and attract and keep more people and make sure...
Oh yeah. That's not my philosophy. At least, not usually.
What I really need to do is pray. For myself- that the God of peace I preach about would be the God of peace in my laying down, my getting up- a very present help in a distracted/troubled mind. I need to pray for our community- that God would work in us what He is working- that this community Jesus died for, created and is now at work in would continue to be molded and shaped in the ways God wants it to be. And I need to pray I don't get in the way of that.
Some sleep would be nice too.
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yeah, as a guy in the core building stage this kills me. The worst two hours of my week are the two hours before we have a gathering. However, those knots in my stomach tend to have three parts:
1. Fear of low numbers = Made righteous through success
2. Fear of not doing enough that week to get people = If I work hard enough the church will be built
3. The weight of responsibility.
I believe Satan attacks me with the first two to hide the God given third. That I might feel the weight of a city that needs Jesus. That I might feel the weight of the responsibility of planting a church. That I might feel the weight of lives, families, and souls being at stake. And that this might cause me to pray and seek God.
I pray that God might reveal to us all the attacks of the enemy that distract us from the good God given stress he is using to purify us.
Posted by: Matthew Hudgins | July 02, 2007 at 07:59 AM
Yea man, I can certainly relate with a lot of the feelings that you are describing. Like Matthew above, I too am currently in the core building stage and nothing stresses me out more than sensing that people are drifting away from our community or from God. It is something that I continually have to check my heart on.
Lord, why am I feeling this anxiety? Oh yea, because deep down I feel that I am really the one that is going to make or break this thing, not you. Ouch.
Posted by: Aaron Loy | July 05, 2007 at 08:01 AM