Focus

It was starting to get ugly.
It was probably my second council meeting as chairman. I had been elected as vice chairman 6 months earlier, and as luck would have it the chairman had moved to a different state. That left me in the captain's chair.
The last place I wanted to be.
It all started when someone mentioned getting one of those small church buses instead of a van. That lead to the question of, if we did get the mini-bus, where would we house it.
We had 2 or 3 people on the board that were still a little bitter about a previous event, and it seemed that everything was just bugging them.
Voices began to raise and I saw faces getting red.
It was time to act.
"Anybody else got anything to say" I blurted out. That seemed to get their attention. "Let's go upstairs".
I was going upstairs to focus. You see that is were the sanctuary is. That is where the altar is.
I explained that we were going to get on our knees and pray. I left it open so anyone could pray either to themselves or out loud.
Why?
The most important reason is focus. Blame the church for not doing this or that, blame it's unwillingness to change, blame it for losing it's mission. But I can tell you the real reason we fail.
We aren't focused.
Think about it, King David was God's man. From a small boy he had faith in his God. God blessed David for that faith. Everything was great. Until...
Instead of being with his troops one day David took some time off. Why not, he had earned it. He had good people under him, the victory would still be won.
He went on top of his estate and happen to look in the wrong direction. You know the rest of the story. That one moment of forgetting what his focus should of been brought David misery the rest of his life.
That was just a moment, a glance if you will, of losing focus for David. Some churches lose their focus for years. And they too spend years in misery.
I want the leaders at my church to stay focused. Forget about all the petty arguments and conflicts, past histories and grudges.
When Paul would write the churches he urged them to focus on Christ and each other. The church in Acts grew in leaps and bounds when they "had everything in common" and "all the believers were one in heart and mind." See my point.
It's easy to get out of focus, all it takes is putting something in front of following Jesus.
Our council now goes before the altar before each meeting. It is a time to confess sin, pray for the sick and for the upcoming meeting.
But really we do it to focus.