I recently turned 56 (you don’t celebrate, you turn 56. Later I will hit 60, hopefully, and after that who knows, but that is another article.). I tell people I have been attending church for 56 years and 9 months. I have attended churches around the globe and have discovered that we (self included) church people can be quite strange at times. When we focus on Jesus, which is the point, we are at our best. When we focus too much on church we can have some problems. Years ago Stephen Covey shared some interesting thoughts in his popular book '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' about people who become too centered on church. He shares the following thoughts:
“I believe that almost anyone who is seriously involved in any church will recognize that churchgoing is not synonymous with personal spirituality. There are some people who get so busy in church worship and projects that they become insensitive to the pressing human needs that surround them, contradicting the very precepts they profess to believe deeply. There are others who attend church less frequently or not at all but whose attitudes and behavior reflect a more genuine centering in the principles of the basic Judeo-Christian ethic.
Having participated throughout my life in organized church and community service group, I have found that attending church does not necessarily mean living the principles taught in those meetings. You can be active in a church but inactive in its gospel.
In the church-centered life, image or appearance can become a person’s dominant consideration, leading to hypocrisy that undermines personal security and intrinsic worth. Guidance comes from a social conscience, and the church-centered person tends to label others artificially in terms of “active”, “inactive”, “liberal”, “orthodox” or “conservative”.
Because the church is a formal organization made up of policies, programs, practices, and people, it cannot by itself give a person any deep, permanent security or sense of intrinsic worth. Living the principles taught by the church can do this, but the organization alone cannot.
Nor can the church give a person a constant sense of guidance. Church-centered people often tend to live in compartments, acting and thinking and feeling in certain ways on the Sabbath and in totally different ways on weekdays. Such a lack of wholeness or unity or integrity is a further threat to security, creating the increased labeling and self-justifying.
Seeing the church as an end rather than as a means to an end undermines a person’s wisdom and sense of balance. Although the church claims to teach people about the source of power, it does not claim to be that power itself. It claims to be one vehicle through which divine power can be channeled into man’s nature.”
While you may not agree with all he says, I hope it will stir you thoughts but more than anything else I hope you will agree, as I stated in beginning; when we focus on Jesus, which is the point, we are at our best!
