Being involved in the church will require you to love people who are difficult to love. Being involved in the church may require you to work with people who are difficult to work with. Being involved in the church, may cost you some of our friends, who don’t see the importance of being actively in a local church. Being involved in the church, may require you to make some sacrafices. You may have to give up some of the other things you have been doing, in order to have the time to do what God wants you to do. Let’s face it, being involved in the life and ministry of the church requires a lot of time and a lot of dedication.
Which reminds me of the story I read the other day about a man who called the pastor of a certain church and told him that he wanted to become a member of his church. But the man went on to tell the past that he would not be at worship ever week, that he was not going to study the Bible, that he had no desire to visit the sick or to serve as a Sunday School teacher or member of any committee in the church.
After hearing what the man had to say the pastor commended him for his desire to be a church member, but told him the church he was looking for was located in another part of town. The man wrote down the address, thanked the pastor and hung up the phone. He then decided to go find the church the minister had told him about. When he arrived at the address, the man came face to face with the result of his own attitude of not wanting to be involved…There standing in front of him was an abandoned church building that was all boarded up and ready to be demolished.