It has been years since I endured going to a Padres game, they kept
interrupting the between innings entertainment with baseball, which can be a
pretty boring thing to watch. But soon we will have football to watch every
Sunday, Monday, and Thursday again, which if you consider it, can be pretty
boring itself. Think of the 40 seconds between the five seconds of action, and
most of the time spent watching is spent watching a gathering of men huddled
together with their backs to the audience. Faces covered with only a number to
tell who they are, with their name above it. If you saw guys like this on the
street, faces covered, you would consider them suspicious, add in their harsh
behavior, and you may call 911. But on a playing field, you pay big bucks,and
celebrate the violence. And we call that entertainment?
Consider the baseball players on the field, they spend their entire career
looking at the backs of their teammates, unless you are the catcher, wearing a
mask and protective equipment. He has a clear view of what is going on, maybe
the best view on the field. So it is up to sportscasters to make the game
interesting, to keep us awake, to keep us from changing channels between
innings, while at the ballpark keep us going to the concession stands. All to
watch guys who are All Stars if they hit .250, being successful 25% of time, and
getting paid big bucks for it. Try that at your job, would you hire a surgeon
who had a 25% success rate? A mechanic, a barber, or even a trash man? Yet
they make millions, but before you get upset with them, they aren’t the fools.
It is the people who pay the price. Imagine if they got paid like I did in
sales, commission. So much for the love of the game. Get paid for a touchdown,
completed pass, strike out or double play. No pay for losing, errors, or
striking out. No money for sitting on the bench, pay to play, the politicians
have been doing pay for play for years, why not ball players? Might even make
them a better player, take them back to the days when athletes had off season
jobs, selling shoes, driving trucks, and running companies. And then the alarm
goes off.....just a nightmare...
I cannot recall the last church service I attended where tithes and
offerings were not collected. While the worship team played, talk about false,
talk about the worship/love of money! I know some churches who place a box at
the back you can give if you want, but somehow I cannot imagine Jesus passing a
bucket, a hat, or even placing a box for his audience. Now I know that the
church needs money to take care of business, but as I sit in the air conditioned
chapel, watching the pastor on a big screen, I wonder if maybe the entertainment
value of religion is like watching sports? As my eyes wander, too many on cell
phones, some falling asleep, and others feigning interest. Has a church service
gone on too long, past our attention span? I ask pastors “why can Billy Graham
share the gospel for 20 minutes and people rush to the stage, you talk for over
an hour and they rush to the doors?” But maybe the more things change the more
they stay the same...
Jesus was talking to his disciples who had fallen asleep, “guys, can’t you
stay awake another hour?” Isn’t our ministry exciting enough to not fall asleep
at half time? To hold your interest? All without an i-phone insight, and you
think they had it rough! Years ago we attended a church who had a Harvest
Festival in lieu of celebrating Halloween. We had our booth set up with our
motorcycles, and let kids and their parents sit on them. Starting
conversations, and sharing Jesus, stopping many times to pray, to minister as
needed, and one comment from an organizer sticks with me. “In our church
outreach setting, you guys are the only ones we see praying and ministering to
others.” How sad, yet for the first few weeks after when new attendees from
that night attend, they brag, but when the entertainment ends, so does their
attendance. So they try to outdo it next year...with live animals, carnival
rides, and food trucks. Large crowds, but little ministry. With one sad
example, a man I know has two sons, but because he had to work the show for his
men’s group, couldn’t spend time with his sons, so I did. You can only imagine
the looks I got showing them off as my grandkids, they are Chinese! So we
need to ask ourselves, where is Jesus in all this? Does he have any
entertainment value? Does he need any? Or is he just another app in the
i-phone of life?
Now ministry can be simple, see a need and meet it. As you go, as the
great commandment states, preach the gospel. You life should be a witness, not
witless. Inviting someone to church or a festival is not evangelism, it is
Jesus working through you via his holy spirit, and others seeing, the spirit
drawing others to him, not some wild carnival. But yet religion stumbles on
without Jesus, with boards meeting to come up with new ways to grow the body, to
entertain the people, and keep the doors open. Do we see a pattern here?
Paul writes “not that we can do it ourselves, but that he is adequate in
all things.” Not too much, nor too little, just what we need. How do we know
what we need? The spirit opens our hearts to it and then supplies it. As we
need it, when we need it. “Thanks be to God who always leads us in Triumph,”
not necessarily on one. So if your relationship with God is like an old Dennis
the Menace cartoon, bragging about the party he just left, “not a bad party,
busted six balloons and a window,” maybe we need to stop, repent, seek what the
spirit is trying to tell us, and then obey. No fancy programs, and no long rest
periods interrupted by God in action. If we seek glory for ourselves, our
church, our ministry, or religion it may be short lived at best. With no fruit
of the spirit, but when we give him all the preeminence, when Jesus gets all the
glory, we get the blessings. You can either sit in the stands and watch, or get
involved and play. Yet some sit and only hear of the great things god is doing,
when they can be part of the action themselves. Availability instead of
ability....or you can end up like football, five seconds of action followed by
40 seconds of rest. In the game, at the game, or just watching the game. The
best players get the biggest rewards, those closest to the action in Christ get
the biggest blessings. Don’t think you can do it, remember even a broken clock
is right twice a day! What’s your excuse for not letting God bless you?
Even if your best seat is aisle 224, row 7, seat 101 at Wrigley Field, you
may know just what I mean!
love with compassion,
Mike
matthew25biker.blogspot.com