On the evening of March 4, 1982, the emcee of TV's popular "Family Feud" program posed to the contestant this question: "What is the most boring place you go to?" Her ready answer? "Church." And it turned out to be the number one answer, based on 100 people surveyed!
Is this what has happened to the church? What church, whose church, is the most boring place to go? Yours? Mine? Can it be that those living when the most striking prophetic fulfillments of all time are bursting around us are finding the source of this truth and light "the most boring place"? If so, it is a paradox stranger than fiction! If so, somewhere there are a lot of inept pastors! If so, somewhere there has been enormous slipping away from the kind of incisive truth that a church of long ago demonstrated! If so, the church is failing to convey the excitement of the greatest thing in the world!
Of course, some people are bored in church because their lives are centered in the very things that are incompatible with the church and its standards. Such, no doubt, feel under pressure in church and attend only because some outside influence dictates that they be there. With such an attitude and motive, church can hardly avoid being considered boring. But surely no one who comes to our places of worship earnestly seeking information about God and blessing for his hungry soul should receive only boredom in return!—W. B. Q.
