Most of the time our gatherings are great. We seek God, He draws near, touches us, speaks to us. People participate, share together in the experience, minister to one another.
But, on occasion, we have a gathering time that is, plain and simple, lousy. At least by certain "human" standards. Everybody is tired, or someone dominates the gathering, or hardly anybody participates, or it is so disjointed that it seems like nothing happened at all.
Sometimes we try too hard, and sometimes we don't put anything into it. Sometimes we gather and we are too full of ourselves. Other times we gather and we are too empty to bring anything to share.
No matter! These "lousy" times are rare exceptions. But even when they happen, it just doesn't matter.
We have learned a couple of key things.
1. God is at work, even when we are asleep, disjointed, or out of sorts. He works in and through everything that we do in His name whether we realize it or not. Sometimes we learn much more when we have times together that aren't "together." Sometimes we are confronted with our own attitudes, our own shortcomings, and our own limitations when things don't go well. We learn from these. God is teaching us. He is at work in all types of situations.
2. Secondly, we have learned that the "gatherings" are not all that important. We often have a traditional-church carryover mentality. We go to gatherings and evaluate our whole church-life experience based on how the gathering went. We are used to evaluating our church experiences based on how the sunday morning church service went. But, in the scheme of things, the gathering time is one of the least important parts of our community life together. It's simply one small component of living a shared, community life with one another. We often have to remind ourselves to put less focus on the gatherings, just enjoy them for what they are, and put more focus on our own life with God and our shared life, day in and day out, with one another. After all, that is church life. Daily, weekly growing, relating, loving, with Christ, with others, in community, and out in the world. That is church life. Sometimes our times together that are "lousy" remind us that the gatherings are not the focus. They are just one part of a whole Christian life lived together, in His power and love.
