Emphasis Preaching Journal

One hot summer night, the church council told the pastor that the giving was down, attendance was down, and the good givers were dying off. The pastor explained that this was a trend in many small town and rural congregations. Unhappy with this response, the council demanded that the pastor go out and visit the inactive members and try to get them to come back to church. The pastor insisted that statistically this did not work. His arguments fell on the deaf ears of the church council.

He went out to visit an older couple who stopped attending Sunday worship once their children all graduated from high school. The couple told the pastor that they did not get anything out of church. They had visited some larger churches in sunbelt states, and had concluded that there are no churches like that around them, so they sit home and read the newspaper on Sunday mornings. The pastor used texts such this 1 Kings passage to make the point that people attend church to worship God, not "be entertained or get something out of the service." The pastor invited the couple to start a ministry in the church that they would want to see grow, but the couple politely ushered the pastor out the front door.

With this information, the pastor went back to the church council and reminded them that the church was there for those who choose to worship God. If the entertainment culture is the prevailing force in the community, then larger decisions regarding mergers, or cooperative ministries needed to be considered. The goal is to worship God as Solomon points out in this text.