Saturday Night Live

This past Saturday evening a chicken sandwich seemed like a good idea for supper and with Chick-fil-A close by, it was an easy choice.   While the order was being prepared, I became aware of a group of college age young people in the back corner.  Several tables had been pulled up close to one another so that it was like one big table for the eleven of them.  Now, they were not being rowdy and loud.  No, what got my attention were the number of Bibles out on the table.  I made a point to walk close enough to be sure of what I was seeing.  As I stood at an unnoticeable distance, I overheard them talking about what they were reading.  It was a Saturday night Bible study.  Saturday night was indeed alive.

 

Since college students often get accused of doing other kinds of stuff on Saturday night, I wanted to report the activity of these eleven.  Surely, their parents would be pleased with their choice of how to spend their time.  I remember from years of being in the pastorate the many committee meetings where the conversation centered on getting the message of Jesus outside the walls of the church and into the world.  If memory serves me correctly, we usually did more talking about it than actually doing it which is a problem with many churches.  As I watched these young people studying the Word, I thought that we probably make it more complicated than it needs to be.  Maybe we cannot see the practical down to earth way to do ministry for trying to find some grandiose noteworthy thing. If it does not cost a lot of money and require a lot of people to implement, the church seems to dismiss it as not a worthy effort.

Ah, but then there is Jesus who said something about two or three being gathered together in His name.  Now that I think about it, I think I counted wrong.  There were more than eleven at that pulled together table.  It was twelve.