Billy Bob's Church

Billy Bob is at it again. He was fishin’ last Sunday morning, almost feeling guilty for missing Sunday morning’s service, when it came to him. He would invent his own church! A church that had services when he wanted them, a church that preached the way he wanted to hear it!

He went down to his laboratory (aka his basement), and started to work. He started reading all kinds of church manuals. He decided which things about church he didn’t like and which parts he did. It wasn’t too long before he came up with his own church. Here is its press release…

The Church On the Go, In the Know and With the Flow!

Rev. Billy Bob presiding.

Are you tired of regular churches? You know, the kind with rules and regulations? Well, come over to our new church, The Church On the Go, In the Know and With the Flow. We have only 4 commandments and 6 suggestions. Our tithe is only 3%. Our services begin about 11:00 a.m. with singing (no hand motions or clapping required). At 11:05 we take a break and have coffee and doughnuts. Around 11:30 we go back into the sanctuary and have the preaching of the Word. All of our messages are guaranteed not to challenge you or make you uncomfortable. We won’t ask you to share your faith or read your Bible. We’ll just tell you that God loves you and that you’re okay. At 11:45 we sing a hymn of dismissal and we all go to (insert your favorite restaurant here) for Sunday dinner. You’ll like our church, so come by if you want. We don’t have a Sunday night or midweek service; that’s when all the good TV shows are on.

We would all laugh if Billy Bob or somebody else had the nerve to start a church based on those principles. We wouldn’t give it much chance of success except as a novelty or freak show. It would never succeed. Or would it?

Isn’t that the way some of us envision church? Maybe not on a conscious level, but certainly with the way we live. My theology professor, Dr. Ronald Wright, used to say, “We are professing theists. We say we believe in God, but we live like atheists. If God was not around, most of us would not notice.” You may be upset by that remark, but think about it. How much time did you spend praying this week? Let me rephrase that; how much time did you spend praying this week that didn’t involve food, tests, or traffic? How many people have you told about the Lord and what He means to your life? When something good happened, did you accept it as part of your hard work, or did you give God the glory for it? How important was God to you this week?

For some of us, the most spiritual we get is when we pray over our corn flakes each morning. “Lord, thank you for these flakes of corn and please don’t let me choke on ‘em.” Really, didn’t God call us to be so much more than that? Let’s risk something for God this week. Quit looking for the easy way and start looking for God’s way. Very rarely are they the same.

It’s easy for us to say God is important to us, but do we really live like He is? If we don’t, Billy Bob has a pew reserved for us…