We Are Bored Series

3. Something is happening (Preview to a Vision week 3)

January 24, 2010

We are Bored

When I was in high school my room was in the basement of my house. Outside my room was a sort of basement living room area where we had a ping pong table set up. Well one day I was sitting around with nothing to do and I got bored. So I thought I would take a ping pong ball and melt a little part of it to see if it would bounce different. So I took a lighter and held a ping pong ball over it. I don’t know if you know this or not but ping pong balls are all sorts of flammable. I turned on the lighter and puff I had a ball of fire in my hand. Of course I lacked the common sense to try this in the bathroom or outside in case of such a problem. I was sitting on the couch at the other end of the basement. Between me and the bathroom was an obstacle course made up of a ping pong table three couches, a fosse ball table and a closed door. Now a ping pong ball is not very big and when it caught on fire it was immediately consumed in flames. I started to notice that those flames were hot as it began burning my hand. So here I am running through the basement with a ball of fire burning my hands trying to move as quickly and yet carefully so as to not catch anything else on fire to the bathroom. I open the door cant stand it anymore and toss the ball into the sink. Of course I failed to consider that it is still a ping pong ball designed to bounce. It launches out of the sink and into the corner of the bathroom. The flame is so strong that it immediately starts to burn the drywall. Well after a great deal of panic and nearly burning down the house I managed to put the fire out. The ping pong ball was gone. The corner of the bathroom was now black instead of blue and I had little burns on my fingers all because I got bored. Have you ever wondered how many crimes have been commited as a result of boredom? How many people take drugs, get drunk, fight, steal, and do other terrible things because they are just looking for something to do? How much property has been damaged or people injured because someone was bored? Boredom can be a dangerous thing in our physical lives. I wonder what happens when we get bored in our Spiritual lives?

I have gone to church my whole life. I have sat in the seats. I have sang the songs. Have prayed the prayers. I have read the Scriptures. I have given communion meditations. I’ve served communion. I have showed up for special events. I have participated in the greeting time. My whole life I have been a Christian. I have done just about everything there is to do inside the church walls. I know how to go through the motions as well as anyone. But I am tired of that. I am bored. I am bored coming to the same services every week singing songs, preaching a sermon and then going home. I am bored spending my week studying and preparing a message that we respond to by saying good job and then leave the same way we came in. After 25 years of life I am bored with church. Not long ago I was in a staff meeting with Jordan, Tim, and Alexis and Jordan started saying some of the same things I was feeling. So we stopped what we were doing to just talk about this for a bit. But rather than me just sharing with you what we talked about I asked them to come share for themselves. This not a gimmick I am using for an illustration, I just wanted to take this morning and to let you hear where we were and how we were feeling about what we were doing as a church.

So Jordan if you would come up here.

Jordan talks about how he was bored in his ministry, tired of what he was doing, looking for something more.

Tim talks about how he is bored with worship being just songs we sing, bored with doing one music set after another and having that be what we consider worship to be

What I realized when we all started talking is that we are bored. As a staff and leadership we are bored. My guess is that if we are bored, some of you are starting to be as well. Some of you have been coming here faithfully for a long time and you are starting to get antsy. Sitting in the seats and going through the motions isn’t really doing it for you anymore and the Spirit inside you is starting to stir as you are feeling driven more than ever to get connected and to be involved with something important. Some of you, like us have started to get bored. Some of you are bored of doing the same thing one Sunday after another. Some of you are starting to get bored talking about it and you want to know what to do.