The Spiritual Cost of Convenience
One of my favorite pastimes involves a lime tree.
We’ll come back to this.
I spent over a decade serving in a large church where growth and attendance were always front of mind. The phrase “we count people because people count” was often repeated, and while there’s truth in that, I began to notice how easily formation could be eclipsed by metrics. Subtle comments about attending church online rather than in person often carried more guilt than grace.
After stepping away from that environment, I had a deep aversion to any guilt-driven language aimed at those who only attend church online. To this day, I wince at anything that smells like shame in the name of church. That’s not the dialect of Jesus.
And yet, I’ve also come to see that convenience carries a spiritual cost of its own.
I now work part-time in a church of less than 200. We are not concerned about numbers, we don’t set attendance goals, not a knock on those who do, we just don’t.
Which leads to why this article was written, the spiritual cost of convenience.
Something happens when we are inconvenienced. Whether this is unexpected traffic, a shop not having the one item we needed, or a cough we can’t get over.
In these states of disruption, the broken flaws hidden behind masks of put-together-ness show. The anger, selfishness, and frustrations emerge with the sudden unexpected nature of inconvenience.
To the prideful, they are excused, and to the humble, reminders, small awakenings, that there are still spaces in their hearts that need to be healed.
But there are also many good things that come from inconvenience.
It’s not convenient to have a dog. We recently took a trip out of town, and went through eight different people before we could find a dog sitter. And yet the joy our Sheltie, Walter brings to our family is worth it.
Our daughters previously attended a school two minutes from our home. If you have ever tried to get girls dressed and out the door in the morning, you know every minute counts. Now they attend a school downtown. Though only six miles away, it often takes 30 plus minutes to drop them off.
It's, well, inconvenient.
Yet, this school is built around being formed like Jesus, a love for learning, and a heart for people.
My wife and I work multiple jobs, we are raising two girls, it is not convenient to go to church. It would be easier to watch online.
However, convenience is just as formative as inconvenience.
It doesn’t take long before online church is a curation of your favorite preachers from your denomination or tribe. The greet your neighbor portion is a commercial break to go switch the laundry. Communion becomes a watched event, like a baseball game and not the communal participation of the Eucharist. The smell and taste of the bread and wine as it is passed between brothers and sisters in Christ is replaced with Febreze.
This is just the service though. It speaks nothing to the people.
You can watch a concert, but it’s not the same as being there. Something about belting out with friends and strangers the lyrics of that Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Coldplay, Chappell Roan (fill in your generations anthem) song. Worship is a participatory experience of lifting our collective voices to God. When you walk into church you are greeted and hugged. There is the physical felt presence of another human, a reminder that you are not an avatar on a screen.
If you need prayer, someone will lay a hand on your shoulder and pray, you are loved person to person; you are seen. You hear stories, not just from a stage, but in a seat or pew of how God brought them through a storm.
When you gather on a Sunday you begin to realize the part you play, to bring your full self, scars, and all. There are moments you are being healed and moments you are the healer. Over time you move from, “I go here for the preacher or the worship” to, “I go to be with my church family.”
Being a part of a church in person makes it harder to shop around. Online you could be part of Matt Chandler, Steven Furtick, Alistair Begg, and Jon Tyson’s churches all in the same month. Formation from convenience leads to pursuit of the novel and inspiring. Leading away from the cultivated growth that happens from being planted, growing in the Word with others, and wrestling with the same ideas together.
Online there is no one to keep you accountable. No one to ask, “Could you serve once a month in the kids ministry?” And no one to push against the awkwardness to say, “Are you okay? You don’t seem like yourself?”
All of that "inconvenience" is gone.
Now, about the lime tree.
When we moved into our current house, someone gave us a lime tree as a gift.
The tree is not convenient.
At first I found it to be a chore, to make sure it was always watered and didn’t dry up. I had to bring it back to life on two occasions, when it was struck with different citrus diseases in the same year. Another time, I had to wash each leaf with a warm wash cloth removing a white gooey substance, 100s and 100s of leaves each individually cleaned.
But over the years, the more attentive I was to the tree, the more consistent I was with watering, fertilizing, and pruning, the more limes we would harvest each year.
And it is such a joy to watch from the bay window, as I send my two girls out to the backyard to pick limes from the tree. To hold the limes in my hand, something I had a part in growing.
The peace of knowing there are no pesticides on these limes, they are safe and can be served to anyone.
Then to go into the kitchen and cut up the limes to make salsa for the family, margaritas for friends, or bring a key lime pie over to a bar-b-q and the pride of knowing the central ingredient came from that one lime tree.
Is it inconvenient, yes, but often that is where the richest formation and joy is found.
Choose to be inconvenienced.
If my work has encouraged or challenged you, you can fuel the next post (and my caffeine habit) right here.