With the advent of the internet and connected mobile devices, it is likely that most of us are distracted too much of the time. We have instant access to knowledge/facts/data on just about any topic we care to investigate. I can attest that this has had a negative impact on my attention span.

With so many distractions, much of the church has felt the pressure to compete for attention. We have resorted to worship settings with complex lighting, smoke machines, and other effects to produce the feel of a rock concert. Sermons are now expected to have video clips or use pop culture references as illustrations.

Basically the whole worship experience is scripted and has become a very large production geared to attract and keep the attention of a culture that is distracted.

There is nothing wrong with any or all of this as long as we don’t lose sight of the message along the way. We can be so focused on method that we give that method more thought than the message we are called to proclaim. We can be so focused on the Sunday morning experience that we lose sight of day to day discipleship and training.

This is problematic because the church is called to make disciples, while “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:20).

The root meaning of the word disciple is to learn. Therefore, a disciple is fundamentally a student. The original disciples learned from Jesus by living with him 24/7 for several years. We learn from Jesus through study of the Bible.

As individuals we often struggle with finding balance in our lives. As churches we aparently share that struggle. We struggle with finding the balance between method and message.

If we focus exclusively on the method, we might focus too much on the experience and the performance on a Sunday. Indeed, in some “seeker-sensitive” churches I have attended, the Gospel was not readily discernible in either the music or the sermon.

At the other extreme, we can focus so much on the message without sufficient attention to the method of delivery. This can make the worship experience seem dry and lifeless.

One extreme provides a pep talk with little substance. The other extreme provides a lecture that provides little encouragement for real life.

My point in writing this is that as church leaders, we need to hold these in tension and always seek to find balance.

I would think that a good place to start is to observe how Jesus did ministry as recorded in the gospels. The disciples were many things, but bored was not one of them. Jesus confronted the culture around him when necessary but he also was appealing to those who were not accepted by the religious establishment.

We have a lot to learn . . .

The author of Hebrews says this about Jesus:

“You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

Hebrews 1:9, ESV

One thing we should keep in mind as church leaders is our tendency to be selective in the things we denounce. I have seen this tendency in myself and others and it has been a persistent problem for my entire church experience.

It is quite easy to find reasons to be angry about stuff that we don’t struggle with or stuff that we think we have straight in our own lives. We can fuss over our pet peeve and ignore some other things that God would like to see changed in us.

In my lifetime, I have heard angry rhetoric about the “culture war” and complaints about the erosion of morals in our country. While we may have a case that the sin we are condemning is truly condemned by God as revealed in the Bible, we also need to understand that our anger is not tempered, as it out to be, by the intensity of love that God has displayed through his Son Jesus.

The danger is that we can fail to admit to our own hard-heartedness and lack of love for those we denounce as sinners. When we do so our hypocrisy is on display for everyone to see, even if we fail to see it in ourselves.

We should constantly keep in mind Jesus’ parable about the log and the speck. My neighbor’s speck can only be confronted after the log is removed from my own eye. The trouble is that my log-eyedness is a chronic, not an acute, symptom of my sinful nature. So, I must admit that I have never been in a log-less state and am therefore unqualified to condemn anyone else.

Recognition of the logs in our own eyes should mediate the tendency to jump on the issue-of-the-day and keep us from being out of balance.

Yes, we should hate the things that God hates, but we don’t have the option of being selective in which ones we condemn.

Also, we are not in a good place if we do not at the same time love all the things that God loves. We don’t have the option of being selective in our loves either.

Perhaps this would be a good place to quote one of the most familiar of Bible verses:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16 (ESV) (Empahsis Added)