Running late for Church..

[Herald]

For the past couple of years, my family has often been late for Sunday service (we struggle with getting our toddler out of the house timely). Our regular church service starts with a half hour of worship music, and many members meander in throughout this period. It helps that it's a huge congregation with a special back section for famlies with babies.

I subscribe to the old cliche "better late than never, but better never late."

Do I understand your situation? Yes. Can you take the necessary steps to be in church on time? Yes, you can.

 

[E Nomine]

Obviously, barring emergencies, it's possible to get to any appointment on time. I'm just expressing my agreement with the initial poster...

on time > late > not going at all

 

[Herald]

Obviously, barring emergencies, it's possible to get to any appointment on time. I'm just expressing my agreement with the initial poster...

on time > late > not going at all

I understand. My daughter is nearly grown, but she was a toddler too. I credit my wife for getting up early and having Bethany ready for church. We seldom were late because she was diligent in this area. Did I need a shot of coffee in the morning to pry open the eye lids? You betcha!

 

[Pergamum]

a bigger "embarrassment factor"? Perhaps deep down they know that they have been negligent in preparing for corporate worship, and would rather not face the fact that everyone in church will thereby know it and "see their dirty laundry"? The same kind of social pressure doesn't really exist for other individual appointments, etc.

If there is a bigger embarrassment factor then, in an odd logic, people could miss church when they are late because they value it more. Sort of like the people think, "Ah no...I've done ruined it...."

 

[Pergamum]

Obviously, barring emergencies, it's possible to get to any appointment on time. I'm just expressing my agreement with the initial poster...

on time > late > not going at all

I am often late to many appointments here. Here it is more culturally acceptable to be late than to brush off last minute guests or people you meet on the road. That is why some churches here have long periods of singing perhaps.


Westerners value time more, and some cultures value relationship more, and so if you meet a friend on the road (or another sick person comes to your door 15minutes till the time you need to leave) than one is socially bound to have a good excuse not to pay them attention.


About TimV's South African church experience, was this due to African cultural expectations or was this a heavily Boer-influenced church?


I also do not like the pastor chiding people from the pulpit and I have also heard this before (in America) and I think that may give your answer to the reason why people don't want to come in late for chuch, the lack of good people skills on the part of the pastor who forgets his purpose is to serve but thinks he is to dominate a congregation.





A related thought: We often put punctuality up there as a moral value and then blow off relationships so that we are not late. How important is punctuality for family affairs (and isn't church a family, or do we clock in like we do at a job?)

 

[TimV]

About TimV's South African church experience, was this due to African cultural expectations or was this a heavily Boer-influenced church?

Boers and Black Africans almost never mix in churches. I've never seen it once in a Reformed church, and that's one of the reasons, time value as you put it. Although it has very little to do with kindness to people you meet walking along the road, and lots to due with the sort of responsibility it takes to have a prosperous culture.

I've posted here before about some of the Bantu I got to know, and how that if they'd been born here in the US they would be wealthy professional people. But their culture holds them back. Even in places like Zimbabwe with the farm take overs, there still aren't any native Bantu running commercial farms. It's not from lack of intelligence, it's that their culture holds them back in all sorts of ways.

Nepotism if you spin it could also be made to seem more humanitarian than Western ideals, but it really isn't compasionate if you look at the big picture. Punctuality is the same. On the farms and in factories, you can punish people for not showing up on time, and you do to break them of that particular cultural habit. With churches it's a bit more difficult, like with the Latin American couple who never came on time that I spoke of above. My Hispanic workers show up on time, otherwise I leave them without work for the day, and they know that. It only takes a time or two, and then they show up. Meeting a friend on the way to work doesn't cut it, and in my mind it should be the same for a church function. Chaos is seductive, and it needs to be constantly fought against.

 

[Pergamum]

Good thoughts...

 

[Theoretical]

a bigger "embarrassment factor"? Perhaps deep down they know that they have been negligent in preparing for corporate worship, and would rather not face the fact that everyone in church will thereby know it and "see their dirty laundry"? The same kind of social pressure doesn't really exist for other individual appointments, etc.

As someone who struggles with this problem, I can say that this is dead-on. It has nothing to do with consciously undervaluing corporate worship.

But I dislike showing up late anywhere, though I often do. I'm not sure that I'm more likely to skip church because I'm late than I would be to skip class. I see the distinction as being between one-time appointments that I can't reschedule (like a dentist appointment or interview) and regular events (like class).

I am glad you started this thread. It is something I have to work on.

 

[KMK]

This was not an issue for Frank


[video=youtube;D9ieLSWu8_E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9ieLSWu8_E[/video]

 

[kvanlaan]

Do I understand your situation? Yes. Can you take the necessary steps to be in church on time? Yes, you can.

Try doing it with nine children. When you're late, the embarassment factor is huge. So we leave at 8:45 on the nose. Children with no shoes on their feet can be shod on the way, but eleven people walking in late is too much an incident to be overlooked. Not going is not an option, so being on time is the only option (from a social point of view). I also would hate to have it on my conscience that I was making more of an effort to make it to work on time than I was to making it to church on time.

 

[TimV]

With 7 kids it simply was never an issue. No trouble at all to show up on time to everything. I guess it just goes to show you, some of the huge problems I have to deal with like anger are probably no sweat to many "type B's" who struggle with punctuality.

 

[Herald]

Do I understand your situation? Yes. Can you take the necessary steps to be in church on time? Yes, you can.

Try doing it with nine children. When you're late, the embarassment factor is huge. So we leave at 8:45 on the nose. Children with no shoes on their feet can be shod on the way, but eleven people walking in late is too much an incident to be overlooked. Not going is not an option, so being on time is the only option (from a social point of view). I also would hate to have it on my conscience that I was making more of an effort to make it to work on time than I was to making it to church on time.

Wow. I yield the floor to the man with the nine children!

 

[kvanlaan]

Wow. I yield the floor to the man with the nine children!

I just figure that if I can do it, anybody can. I am not an organized person (though my wife is). It is perhaps just the idea of being late to just about anything with such a crowd that keeps us on time (for the most part) for everything.

 

[Herald]

Kevin, a former boss of mine had eleven children (he now has twelve). He purchased a commuter van that is used to transport commercial passengers. That's what he transported his family in to wherever it was they were going.

 

[kvanlaan]

Bill, we're in a 12 passenger van with 11 people and, Lord willing, Gabriel Teije van der Laan will arrive on the 12th of December and fill that last space. From there, the next jump is me getting a bus license and us buying a commercial commuter van. (!!)

 

[Herald]

For what it's worth I started my Sunday school lesson promptly at 9:15 am this morning. True to form, half the class came in about ten minutes into it. You can see them all making their way awkwardly to their sits, grabbing the outlines I prepared and fumbling their way to where I was in lesson. Some are getting the message, some aren't.

 

[Abd_Yesua_alMasih]

If you don't turn up to work for a day you loose your job.

If you arrive late to work you can apologize and say "car trouble" or "I will work on my day off" or something similar and everything is fine.

If you miss an appointment you generally have to pay for it (ie. at the doctor's) or you disappoint a friend.

If you are late for an appointment you still get something out of it - the doctor still sees you but for less time or your coffee with a friend needs to be shortened.

If you are late for church you are embarrassed, looked down on others for being unorganized, socially set aside, told off by the elders... etc...

If you just don't go to church that day you miss 1.92% of Sunday services for that year and the loss can be written off as an unforeseen difficulty.

So you see, at the end of the day, people have a heavy incentive to make work or appointments if they are running late, but are encouraged to not go to church at all if they are in the same position rather than arrive late.

 

[Timothy William]

With 7 kids it simply was never an issue. No trouble at all to show up on time to everything. I guess it just goes to show you, some of the huge problems I have to deal with like anger are probably no sweat to many "type B's" who struggle with punctuality.

I am hopelessly unpunctual, with everything, except when I have had a job for which I absolutely cannot be late. But I've never struggled with anger at all, and I don't think I've shouted at anyone in my life (or not since I was a small child).

 

[JonathanHunt]

Hey Kevin, isn't it time to update the sig a little?