Earlier this week Mark Driscoll wrote some reflections on his church after last weekend’s lowly attended church services. His church was one of very few who kept their doors open in the entire Northwest last weekend.
I don’t know of any churches that stayed open last weekend in Portland.
Mark gave a list of 3 things he learned:
- We learn who sees (his church) as a calling and who sees it as a job.
- We learn about our own heart.
- We learn about the deep love some people have for our church.
Ok, before I share my thoughts…let me first say I have the utmost respect for Mark as a teacher and God has used him to draw people to Christ in a tremendous way. My opinion of him regarding those things isn’t changed by what he wrote.
K, some thoughts of mine.
I thought the entire post was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Chalk me up as one person who was glad church was canceled last weekend, and I don’t think my level of commitment to my church needs to be questioned because of it (something I wrote about HERE).
So why do I say ridiculous…
- It was unsafe– every road in my area of town was requiring chains to drive. I don’t think that has ever happened before. To ask thousands of people to wake up and drive in the morning would have been a compromising situation (and this is coming from someone who usually makes fun of Northwest drivers in snow).
- Someone doesn’t show their level of commitment or deep love for a specific church by showing up in the worst of weather, they show it in their desire to reach and serve people and in their devotion to Christ.
- Being the church isn’t just a Sunday morning thing. I sensed a ton of disappointment in what Mark wrote. Clearly lots of key volunteers did not show up, and obviously their numbers were down big time. But when did being a good Christian and being devoted to a church become a Sunday only thing? Why does everything in a church boil down to 2 hours on a Sunday morning? So church got snowed out…isn’t serving your family in a Christ-like way just as valuable. Maybe a better thing in this situation would have been to invite housebound neighbors over instead of driving across town in a blizzard.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.
