Thoughts On Church

A couple weeks ago I went to my parents' church for one of their revival services and as I was sitting in the pew, a few thoughts ran through my mind.

1 - What is the purpose of the offertory song? Is it to provide a time for people to quietly talk amongst themselves? Is it so people can sit back and enjoy a six minute song? No, I'm pretty sure it's there so that some sound can be heard for about ninety seconds other than the sound of money clinking into the plates. So, that being the true purpose, why do churches insist on having such insanely long piano/organ offertory songs?! It literally takes at the most ninety seconds to pass the plates, and after that people just sit there and feel awkward for the other four and a half minutes. It's insane and it must stop.

2 - What is the purpose of a "revival"? Is it to revive the church or to bring in non-believers so that they can hear the gospel? It has to be one or the other. If it's to revive the believers, then don't tell people to bring their friends, because their friends probably aren't Christians, and they don't need to bring them to church so they can hear about how to be a Christian in the workplace (no lie, thats what one entire night of the revival was about). However, if the revival is to bring in people off the street, then the sermons should be geared towards them. There's a time and a place for preaching, and there's a time and a place for teaching. To me this sounds like an incredibly common sense thing, but for some reason churches have a tendancy to mix them up. One of the first steps to sermon preparation is knowing your audience!