The Cringe Factor

Ever notice how sometimes you have a squeaky door around the house that gets on your nerves…it causes you to cringe every time you hear it and while you have good intentions of someday fixing it…you never do. Now why is that? Well one reason may be that you become used to hearing it and thus it doesn’t bother you as much anymore.

The same thing happens in churches all the time. You tolerate sister so-and-so singing off key, or brother so-and-so teaching in his normal boring way or the service being disorganized because it’s always been done that way. It used to bother you but now it doesn’t because that’s just the way we do things around here.

However, where your attitude begins to change is when your neighbor or your relative whom you’ve been inviting for years suddenly shows up for church one day. Now you are sitting there through the entire service watching and listening through their eyes and ears. “Wow I wonder what they thought of that” is the thought that keeps running through your mind. Whether it’s bad singing, bad teaching, disorganization, using words that only the “insiders” will know or a myriad of other things, you begin to cringe knowing that your friend or relative has got to be perplexed that all this is being allowed to happen.

If our God is as excellent as what we say He is, then He deserves nothing less than our best back in return. So I want to challenge all of you in your lives and in your ministries here at the church to remove the cringe. Always think through the eyes of the person walking in off the street for the first time. Will this make sense to them? Will they be more or less inspired to start a relationship with Christ? If my best friend was not a Christian and they said they’d give church one shot and one shot only, would I still do this, allow this, participate in this, etc.

I know each week as I prepare for the Experience, these are the questions that go through my mind, because I never know who may be giving God one shot. That’s why we do our best to make sure that what you see and hear from the platform is the very best it can be. That’s why in this blog on Sunday afternoons you read me complaining about stupid mistakes that could have been avoided. Is some of it because I’m a perfectionist…yes absolutely, but mostly it has to do with being able to say at the end of each day…”God I gave my very best.” So how about you…is there anything in your life or ministry that would cause the rest of us to cringe? If so, what are you going to do about it?