What Happens After You Leave Church?

I left church, took off my volunteer badge and put it in the glove compartment…

With a deep sigh of satisfaction, I started the car and headed out of the parking lot, away from church.

Volunteering was over for another week.

Church was over for another week.

Tomorrow was the start of a work week…

A work week that felt strangely empty compared to what I had just experienced at church.

On the way I home, I stopped at a store.  Walking through the bath accessories aisle —

(Please note we don’t need bath accessories, but as my wife says, I pay a lot of attention to things I don’t need!)

–Walking through the bath accessories aisle, I noticed a toothbrush holder emblazoned with the word, “Believe!”

“In what?” I wondered.

Next to it a cup read, “Praise”.

The soap dish encouraged me to “Serve”.

Really, I thought?  Religious messages?  On a toothbrush holder?   Isn’t that demeaning to God?

At home I told my wife about the strange bathroom accessories.

“Can you imagine”, I asked, “putting religious reminders on a toothbrush holder?”

“It is one of the first things you see every morning.

“But doesn’t that kind of thinking belong in church?”

She gave me a look that said, “Really?”

As usual when it comes to important issues, my wife was right.   And my thinking?  Let’s just say it needed a little adjustment. 

It was Jesus himself who told us to go into the world and make disciples. Disciples who will love God and each other radically. 

Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

With that kind of commission to follow, is the real question what happens inside the church building, or what happens after we leave?