Ask the Pastor: the 2 Missing Questions
There were two questions that I failed to answer from Ask the Pastor. Somehow they were misplaced from the other questions. After coming home from the Seattle Mariner game late on Friday night, for some reason, I remembered I didn’t answer them. Here they are:
Why are the blinds down in the sanctuary and not letting the natural light in? Many churches, like ours, are using multimedia in their services. When we have natural light coming in, it washes out our screen as well as all the other lights on the stage. When my last church built their worship center, they designed to have natural light coming down from above and right on Pastor Chuck Swindoll. Great idea but not effective as everything was washed out. When we used to have the blinds raised, you should have seen my vantage point when I speaking: people looking outside all the time. I remember one winter day when it started to snow and kept snowing. I lost my audience the entire service as the beautiful view from outside was stealing the all the focus and attention. It’s hard to compete against God’s creation, especially snowflakes.
In a church culture that places a high emphasis on marriage and family, what advice would you have for a single Christian? On one hand, I am glad you have noticed our intentional emphasis on this critical area. First of all, I would encourage you to take good notes for when we have a marriage series. After all, who you marry will determine the amount of happiness or misery in your life! Candy and I had a strong foundation for marriage due to the great teaching we received before we ever married. Secondly, I would encourage you to attend Collision on Tuesday nights. It is targeted for high school graduates to age 29. They eat together and then have a Bible study. Third, let me encourage you to focus on being the kind of person that someone else would be blessed (and blown away) to be with or to possibly date.
However, if God has called you to remain single in life, please take the admonition from Apostle Paul to heart. In I Corinthians 7:7-8, Paul refers to being married or remaining single as a “gift”. It may appear that nearly everyone marries, but it is not God’s plan for everyone. Paul offers up his life as an example of one who did not have to worry about the extra problems and stresses that come with marriage and/or family. He devoted his entire life to spreading the Word of God. He would not have been such a useful messenger if he had been married. If this is what God’s will is for your life, pour yourself into serving God in ways that will reap eternal blessings in heaven.