If you have kids, getting them to church Sunday mornings is a big production. You’ve gotta wake them up. Get ’em bathed. Get ’em in their Sunday clothes. Get ’em fed. Get ’em out the door in enough time to get them to children’s church, just as the worship music starts. If possible.
Which it isn’t always. The kids are tired. The teenagers especially so. You’re tired. Some of them won’t bathe; or if left unsupervised, won’t bother to use soap, and will simply smell like wet dog. The younger daughter insists on dressing like a princess; the older daughter insists on showing off her newly-grown boobs; the boys don’t care to find anything clean to wear. The less-devout members of your family will wonder why we have to go to church every Sunday; why can’t we go only twice a year like Grandma? The kids who find it boring will complain it’s so boring. And though you were hoping to show up at church prepared to worship, you’ve already committed seven mental acts of murder, so I suppose you’re gonna show up prepared to repent.
(For whatever reason, in a lot of families, a big Sunday breakfast is added to this big production. Instead of a rushed bowl of breakfast cereal, there’s omelets and baked ham and waffles and scones and grits and all sorts of Sunday brunch-type items. My own family had donuts. And since I’m hyperactive, you did not want to deal with me after you put three jelly donuts in me. Give me a treadmill and I could power a city. But I digress.)
Anyway, that’s if you have kids. If you don’t, you only have to deal with yourself, and maybe your spouse; and even that’s difficult. Even though I’m an early riser, I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination: I might’ve been awake for hours by the time the Sunday services start, but I still feel like I need some sugar in my system. (Not caffeine. Caffeine only makes me twitch. Sugar keeps me going.)
My point is: A lot of mornings it just feels much, much easier to skip church services and relax.
“It’s a day of rest.”
Christians speculate about all the reasons why Christians won’t go to church. Maybe they don’t believe in God enough. Maybe they feel too convicted by their sins. Maybe they don’t like the music or preaching. Maybe they don’t take the sacraments seriously. Maybe they were alienated by certain less-than-loving Christians.
Nah. It’s because skipping church is the path of least resistance. Going to church is an effort. You gotta push yourself, and push others, to go. Pushing the others feels like legalism, and feels totally wrong; they shouldn’t have to be made to go. For that matter I shouldn’t have to be made to go either… so why am I going anyway? I’d much rather go to the theater.
Picture giving a classroom of third-graders this choice: “We can stay in and do our reading lesson. Or we can have an extra-long recess. What would you rather do?” What do you think they’d rather do? Right: The extra-long recess. Doesn’t matter how much they like their readers: They like the swings more. Now, imagine instead of the option of an extra recess, it’s their regular recess time—and you’re telling them they really ought to go back to class and study their readers. Not one of them will voluntarily go back to class. You’d have to force them, and they’d be very cross about it. And that’s the attitude Christians have when you tell them they must give up their lazy Sunday. The path of least resistance is simply to not go.
Poll people all you like. People lie on polls, you know. The polls will only give you their favorite excuses. The real reason is because it’s too much work. And worship, they believe, must not be work. It must be rest. Work is the curse of sin, but rest is the blessing of the Sabbath day. So they’re gonna rest, and the most restful thing they can think of is to not go to church.
Here’s the thing: Worship is work.
Worship is any act of obedience and love towards God. Didja get that? Acts of obedience. Good works. Things you do. Doing nothing isn’t worship. Rest isn’t worship.
Yes, we should rest; God tells us to take a Sabbath, and don’t work that day. But Sunday, contrary to popular belief, isn’t the Sabbath. It’s Sunday. It’s the day Jesus rose from the dead, after resting in the grave on Sabbath. It’s the day we Christians usually come together and worship Jesus. And worship is work. Good work, but still work.
You want a day off? I don’t blame you. That’s what Saturdays are for. Problem is, because most of us have Saturdays free, everybody schedules everything for Saturday: Clubs, socials, mixers, parties, sports, catch-up days for work, everything. Churches too. Nobody rests on Saturday, and since church is on Sunday, everybody assumes that’s our Sabbath. Churches even teach us so. So it’s their own fault when people believe them… and decide to take the day off from church.
Churches need to leave people alone on Saturdays. Let ’em rest, like God intended. Encourage them to cancel all their Saturday obligations, and relax. And then, come Sunday morning, when they’re all rested and fired up, they can come worship with us. When we turn Saturdays into a burden, Sunday morning church becomes another burden. We need to bear that in mind, and avoid adding to the Saturday burden. Encourage proper Sabbath rest, and people are less likely to skip Sundays.
Don’t make it such a production.
The other part of the problem is when I put too much emphasis on Sunday morning worship. I’m supposed to be worshiping God throughout the week, not just Sunday mornings.
Our culture tells us we oughta wear our best to church, ’cause God deserves our best. And he does; but our ideas of best don’t always match his. He only cares that we wear clean clothes to church. In the Law, the LORD instructed the Hebrews time and again to be ritually clean: If they did anything to make themselves ritually unclean, they were to bathe (i.e. baptize themselves) and wait till sundown. Cleanliness was the idea. Not having our best clothes on. (And consider how often people don’t wash their Sunday best, ’cause they only wear it to church; plus it’s dryclean-only.)
Our families scramble to get to church on time, because we’re lousy at time management: We’re tired from the lack of rest on Saturday, so we wake up late, and shorten the amount of time we have to prepare for church. Some of us simply need to get up earlier. We should prepare ourselves to go to church like we do for work or school. (Which oughta be easier than preparing for work or school, ’cause most Sunday services start later in the day.) Wear clean clothes, but dress as usual. Have breakfast as usual. Get out the door as usual. Do something leisurely with your extra time; maybe even go to your church’s earlier functions. For once.
Most of your churches will never even notice the change in your wardrobe. (And if they make a big fuss about it, that’s their problem.) But they will notice you’re on time, or early, and appreciate it. As will you. It’s nice to not be so stressed out about going to church.