Skip to main content

Contribution vs. Attendance



   In almost every church I've been in there is a board up front that lists some statistics for the church.  Now the way they are organized and what they are called varies but normally it falls into two categories:  Contribution and Attendance.  Attendance is the number of people who show up to any given service, a head count.  Contribution refers to what people gave during that time, usually a dollar figure.  Let me tell you something, the contribution is the more important part of worship than the attendance.

   Now before you dismiss me as a money grubbing preacher let me clarify something.  When I say contribution, I'm not meaning just the offering that is collected on the first day of the week.  I mean what we contribute to the worship.  Did we sing and make melody with our heart? Did we pray along in prayer?  Did we consider the word of God being taught and apply it to ourselves?  Did we examine ourselves before we remember the Lord’s death with the communion?  And yes, did we purpose in our heart to lay by and store for the Lord's work?  Did we participate and contribute to the worship or did we just show up?

   You can’t contribute if you don’t attend but don’t think that just attending is what worship is all about.  Hebrews 10:24-25 tells us;
And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

   In worship we not only praise God but also teach and admonish one another (Colossians 3:16). To do that it takes more than just being at a place, it takes an active mind engaging in the process.

   We not only have a service to attend but we must also attend to service. What is your contribution to worship?


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

  Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so.  Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English.  Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome.  Wouldn’t you feel good?   You shouldn’t.  As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590.   You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with.   Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Master Your Self

  In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt.  He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!)  Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest.  Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt!   Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way.  He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal.  As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself.  He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors.   But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gift You Give Yourself

    I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me.   There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15).  I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven.  So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives.  When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.
Post a Comment
Read more