Sunday is hardly a day of relaxation for those kept busy organising services

YOU may regularly worship at a church week by week. You may occasionally go inside a church building for a wedding, funeral or at Christmas. Whoever you are, I wonder if you have considered what needs to take place for these services to happen.

Someone has to open up and the building has to be kept clean. Sound systems need connecting. The laptop has to be persuaded to ‘talk’ to the digital projector. Musicians will have practised in advance and will arrive early to set up. If it is a communion service, chalices and patens (or trays of cups and plates – depending on the type of church) have to be got ready. There will be a rota for people to welcome those attending, a rota for people to do readings and prayers and a rota for receiving the offering. Then someone will have to count the offering and ensure that it is banked safely. A news sheet (if there is one) will have been collated, printed and distributed. Someone will have prepared a sermon and others will be ready to lead groups of children and young people in Sunday School. There is much I have probably omitted, so it is a shock, considering all the energy expended in making Sundays happen, to read the words of the prophet Amos, who declares, “The Lord says, ‘I hate your religious festivals… away with the noise of your songs”.

If God is really not that impressed with the efforts we make Sunday by Sunday, what is he looking for? Amos has the answer to this question, too. Later in his Old Testament book, he reveals God’s plans for people. In a section of his message translated by Eugene Peterson, we hear God saying, “Do you know what I want? I want justice – oceans of it. I want fairness, rivers of it”.

It seems that there is only one reason for going to a church service and that is to leave determined, with God’s help, to work for a just and fair world for all. Now that is a project with which I can identify.

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