Playing Church

I've been thinking a lot lately about about how we do church. As a pastor I feel a lot of pressure to do things the way that they've always been done. I often get the questions about Wednesday night services and Sunday school and so forth. "Do you guys have anything for me?" I want to say, "I don't have anything for you, but maybe you have something for God." I don't mean to say that those things are bad in and of themselves, and we do have things for people, but we have become so consumeristic in the way that we "church shop" that the purpose of church becomes quite murky. When you come to a place like Crossroads Fellowship where we have very few "programs" and we're basically a pretty small church, then you don't have much choice but to get involved. But as the church grows how do we keep that same kind of commitment?

The discussion is often there about who is church for. In other words, should we focus our energy for the church service to direct it at Christians or at making non-Christians feel comfortable? I recently heard someone say that church is not for Christians nor non-Christians, but rather it is for God. Maybe you're reading this right now and you're not a Christian. Let me ask you, Would you rather go to a church to focus on something a lot bigger than you or would you prefer that it be all about you? If it's all about you then what's the point in worshipping God? And if it's not about worshipping God, then why are we there at all?

Let's all try to think outside of ourselves and start to think about bigger things. Let's all try to ask the same question, "How can I be used for something really big?" Let's all try to forget ourselves for just a little bit.