Let’s Have a Meeting

Soon after we moved to our present location Sherri and I noticed that a group of people were meeting every Wednesday night at a house on the corner up from our house. Cars and trucks lined both streets. Men and women paraded into the house, and very often they were still meeting when we went to bed. Sherri and I were curious as to what these people were doing. We decided that they were having a Bible study although I don’t think I ever saw anyone carrying a Bible. After about four months I decided to ask someone what kind of meeting they were having. The guy reluctantly said, “Its a birthday party.” I replied, “You folks sure do have a lot of birthdays!” Later I found out from the home owner that the group was meeting to play poker, Texas Hold’um. He invited me, but so far I haven’t gone. Sherri and I joke about going over to the “Bible Study”.

People like to meet. Baptist meet a lot. If I had a dollar for every church related meeting I’ve attended in my six decade of life I could retire. Wait, I am retired!  Baptist have Bible studies, prayer meetings, home groups, eating meetings, “we call them fellowships”, planning meetings, deacon’s meetings, women’s mission meetings, men’s meetings, concerts, sing alongs, regular business meetings, called meetings, and many other meetings which may or may not be necessary. Then we meet on Sundays for the worship meeting and the corporate Bible study meeting which we call Sunday school.

Sometimes I wonder, ‘Are all of these meetings doing any good?’ Do our meetings further the Kingdom of God? How many souls are saved as a result of our gatherings? Do the hungry get fed?  Do we help the homeless because of a meeting? Do our meetings place us in a position to show love to those groups like the transgenders? What if one of them actually came to our church?  They might want to use our bathrooms! How many of our meetings result in our going into the projects, the ghettos, the bars, and the streets where drug dealers and prostitutes are found? Oh, we have a reputation to protect, we Baptist!  Would Jesus ever be seen in places like that?  We pride ourselves in going to a foreign country for a week to “carry the gospel message”, but never consider taking that same message to the dark places in our own cities where sinners lurk.

Do our meetings produce more baptisms? Do our meetings cause us to be more compassionate, more forgiving, more merciful, more Christlike? Do our meetings help convince us that our political and religious diffifferences, our biases, and our hatred toward those who disagree with us go against everything that Jesus taught. Why then do we meet so much? I think our meetings make us feel better about ourselves. For a little while we can take our minds off of our own selfishness, our selfserving lifestyle. We convince ourselves that we are doing God’s work. I’m sure God is very impressed by our many meetings, maybe not. I think that perhaps the poker game in my neighborhood might further God’s Kingdom just as much as some of our Baptist meetings.