The Life-Sucking Properties of Being Ignored

Our church web site provides another opportunity
for people to ignore stuff I do for them.
@FailingPastor

I do not have a church secretary. I’m fairly lucky to have a church at this point. This means that all the little details of running the church fall on me.

I’ve been updating our church website weekly for nigh on 17 years now. I’m the guy that suggested a website and did all the research to find out how to get one up, how to update it, and I even picked up a little coding along the way. Yahoo Sitebuilder was my initial service.

The main purpose of the website is to upload sermon audio. This is so people all around the globe have an opportunity to not listen to my sermons.

For many years I sent out a church newsletter. It was a one page devotional and the back page had announcements and upcoming events. I typed, printed, copied, enveloped, addressed, and stamped all of them every month.

I had a sneaking suspicion no one read them. One month I put in the middle of my devotional this sentence: “If you call me after reading this, I will give you $5.”

Two people called me. Probably about 100 people could have potentially read the letter. Two called. That was enough. After giving them each $5, I stopped doing monthly newsletters.

I also used to do a weekly handout to the church. On the front page would be a review of a book I was reading. For instance, I read Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and did a one page summary of every chapter. I read through another systematic theology, five volumes worth, and did a page on each chapter.

I would print off about 15 for a Sunday. I’d bring the leftovers home and keep them, you know, in case someone wanted back copies. I did this for years. I did it until I ran out of file cabinet space from all the leftovers no one asked for. No one was taking them. So I stopped that too.

I started a blog for daily bible reminders and study helps. A handful of people from Australia began reading it, but only two from church did.

There’s an auto mechanic in our church, along with a furnace repairman, a doctor, an IT guy, and a pharmacist. They are always busy. They can’t get a break; everybody wants their services. I can’t get people to use my services even if I pay em to.

There is a reason pastors are depressed.

Every Sunday I preach to more empty chairs than people. Like talking to a wall. A wall that pays me so it can hit me in the head. Don’t even get me started on midweek Bible study.

So, yeah, no one pays any attention, but like Ezekiel, we’re watchmen. We’re accountable to give the warning, whether people heed the warning is up to them.

I’m the watchman on the wall and only the wall hears. But at least the wall will be ready. If it’s not “busy.”

But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand  So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.
–Ezekiel 33:6-7