Distracted in church

 If you are distracted on Sunday morning and you’re thinking about:

(the classic example) your lunch, 

your to-do list, 

the thing your brother did that hurt your feelings, 

or 

those kids across the aisle that are having an extended, animated conversation…

What do you do? How do you regain your focus on the message being preached?

I read an article once by a preacher who said he hated babies in church. As soon as they cry, he claimed, at least half the congregation was distracted. All that hard work he’d put into preparation was for nothing, he said. I hated the article because the preacher was stuck on himself as the messenger rather than Christ as the message. But he wasn’t wrong that there are distractions. 

Some of those distractions are unavoidable—your growling stomach is pretty distracting, especially when the preacher is making those “end of sermon” sounds. A crying baby means a mother is in church and she’s hoping to quiet the little one quickly. Some people find it distracting (I personally “note” it, then mentally shove it aside). 

Some distractions you can do something about: jot down the to-do swirling around in your mind so you can dismiss it for later. Pray for the ability to forgive your brother. Snap your fingers at those kids, like parents did in the church where I grew up. Call out to them to be still or quiet, which I’ve seen, but not often. Try to ignore them, as you would an infant. 

But what if you can’t? And it’s been ten minutes or more and the adults on their row and the one behind either don’t notice or are more skilled at ignoring it than you are? What do you do then? Do you give up and play video games on your phone because you’re not going to get anything out of the message today? Maybe you give up and write an angry, undeliverable letter to either the kids or their parents complaining about their behavior?

Or do you try to unobtrusively do something that will end the distraction?

Well, if you’re me, you move as quietly and low (so as to avoid getting in the camera shot) as possible to the empty chair beside those kids.

 You don’t say anything to them, you just sit down and heave a sigh of relief that you’ll probably be able to get something out of the tail end of the message. It turns out that it’s about love “not rejoic[ing] in wrongdoing but rejoic[ing] in the truth.” And you are glad that you heard the message and that those kids probably did, too, because you thought that their long-term benefit was more important than giving up and playing video games on your phone.

And I would do it again, only sooner.