Having spent a good amount of time this past week evaluating the ministry at our church, I started to ask the question, “Is the commodity of convenience really beneficial to our church body?” Some argue that convenience, say for worship, is a good thing, that it offers more opportunities for worship for those who absolutely cannot physically attend church on the regular day of worship, which for most churches is Sunday morning. I can see how that could be true!
But I wonder if, many times, we confuse necessity with convenience! Because of our culture, we think that convenience is necessary – that the world must revolve around each individual and therefore, God must accommodate himself to the conveniences of man, which never happens in Scripture. Convenience is necessary and what is necessary must be convenient! Could this be one of the devil’s clever traps?
I have often heard over the years from various preachers, and especially seminarians in their chapels how we don’t put God first in our lives, and the examples they cite are so ordinary – going fishing, golfing, sleeping in, all of those things that some would regularly associate with 1st and 3rd commandment issues. But it goes far deeper than that. It isn’t just the fact that you can’t worship God properly on a fishing boat, or on a golf course. It’s the overall attitude that God better accommodate himself to MY schedule or I’m going to kick him out of my life!
Talk about a 1st commandment issue! The attitude that convenience is necessary could very well lead to the thought and the conviction that what is necessary, word and sacrament, better be convenient. A devilish trap – one that has so often led to the severing of one’s relationship with the Savior. Why? Because if our spiritual habits are based upon convenience, then something else will surely come along that will be MORE convenient than the convenience which is offered in the first place.
Finally, what is convenient is not necessarily beneficial. What is necessary need not be necessarily convenient.
