While I love serving churches as a pastor or musician, there are times when it is a real drag to work on Sundays. Especially when there is a great free music festival like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass happening in Golden Gate Park. (don’t worry, I am going to sneak over to hear some good bands in and around my work schedule!)
So I personally get it that attending church on a given Sunday is a real choice. Beyond music concerts, theater performances, and street festivals, Sundays are great days for bike rides, sports, hiking, and other adventures. Lots of great events happen on Sundays and then, of course, there are all the places to “get away” to for the weekend.
It’s also hard to get together with friends who only have weekend time. I regularly get left out of brunches and dinner parties because “oh yeh, Melinda works on Sundays.” Insert eye roll. (I might also add that many of our friends have no clue about churches or why I’m a pastor or would even want to be a pastor)
When I was a child and even through my years in college, it wasn’t such a difficult choice because most people went to church on Sunday. In Texas, we even had “blue” laws that kept us from going shopping or doing much of anything, besides go to church on Sunday. And for those of us for whom those years of “church training” was effective, we don’t feel quite “right” on Sunday morning if we aren’t in worship. I may pine to go do all those things everyone else is doing, and really enjoy doing so on occasion, but I can’t go too many Sundays without missing church. Attending a church service on Sunday is a habit and it’s one of my better ones, so I plan to keep it!
Still, beyond the “habit” of attending worship on Sunday, I go to church because I want my life to have meaning. I go to church on Sunday because I have big questions about living and dying and justice and mercy, and I want to learn to be “in community” with folks who are also serious about these kinds of questions. I go to church, not because that is where “God lives”, but because I find that church is a place where I can quiet down and listen for the voice of the still-speaking God.
Sure I can pray at home and while walking in nature, but there is something about shared silence that is deeper and more reverent. Of course, I can read all sorts of books and study the Bible whenever I want, but it is so much richer to talk about these matters of faith with others – especially with those who see things differently. And it is wonderful to be part of a community that includes a wide range of ages so that I don’t get stuck in generational assumptions about the world.
Finally, as I look at the hideous divisions within our national and global politics, I go to church because I want to practice being a member of a community that learns to disagree without becoming divisive. I go to church to learn how to be a better person upon this earth and a better citizen too.
How ’bout you?