Our Problems Are Getting In The Way Of Our Problems

The good people at Water is Life came out with one of the most brilliant ads I have seen in a while. In the video Haitians read aloud tweets of First World problems. The irony and contrast are laid out so brilliantly as to cut straight to the bone. If you haven’t seen it, check it out here.

The video spurred thoughts about First World Church problems and how they get in the way of seeing our real problems. If we were going to list the sorts of problems we complain about as First World Christians, what would they show us? Here are some complaints as a pastor I might make, or I can imagine people in our churches making.

That other church down the street keeps stealing our people.

I wish our band sounded more like Hillsong.

Our insurance on our building keeps going up.

If we keep investing money into repairing our roof we aren’t going to be able to afford that new van.

I just wish we could afford more than one full time pastor.

It is really hard to get people to volunteer more than one or two hours a week at the church.

Evangelism is tough because all of my neighbors have churches.

I can’t believe the denomination expects us to tithe out of our building fund. That is going to make our 9 million dollar building a ten million dollar building. How do they expect us to do that?

If we don’t get a new video projector we are never going to grow our worship service.

When will these young people learn to worship like adults.

I think we are going to look for another church. I really need a small group that fits my schedule and they don’t have any on Monday or Tuesday nights. God is telling me it is time for a change.

We need a youth pastor at our church, I can’t get my kids to be interested in church, the church needs to fix that.

I am just not feeling fed right now. I go to worship every week, I go to a Bible study, I listen to praise music throughout the day and it just isn’t enough. We may need a new church or I may need to start listening to some other podcasts of other churches.

Our pastor talks about money too much. Doesn’t he understand that between my mortgage, my three car payments, and my vacation home that money is tight these days.

It is just too easy to get lost in our culture and think that the problems in front of us are real problems. They distract us from real problems like these.

Our people don’t really know how to pray.

I know Jesus told me to go and make disciples but I don’t know how to be a disciple.

We keep working to keep marriage “Biblical” and yet our marriages are failing at alarming rates.

Our youth haven’t been discipled at home, they aren’t connected to the community of church, and they think it all is pretty irrelevant.

The majority of our church planting efforts are just a repackaging of existing Christians.

These are real problems.