Today was one of those kind of Sunday services where a sizable number of folks were just not here. Some were on vacations, one family was at the hospital, another was attending a baby dedication at another church, a few were sick, and some were just backslidden. Now, what do you do in that situation? Do you get angry at the folks who are not there? Do you fall into the "slough of despond" and project that so that everyone feels equally depressed? I have tried both of those approaches and have not been all that pleased with the results. What I did today was to put as positive a spin on things as I could. I made a conscious decision that I was going to be up. My hope is that such an approach will be contagious, that the service will be, in the best sense of the word, uplifting. But, there is a down side to being up. Suppose you walk into church and see a lot fewer people than ought to be there and just about the time you are getting worried the pastor comes on like nothing is wrong, as though he is oblivious to what seem so obvious to you. Somehow, I want the church to know that we do not live or die by the statistics, that we can worship the Lord with many or with with few. I want to project a balanced concern about where we are and where we ought to be numerically, but that I refuse to allow that to rule my emotions. Maybe that is too nuanced a message to get across in the tone of a Sunday morning service. Maybe that is why I have a blog, to develop those ideas for the two or three folks in the congregation who will read them.
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