Weak-End Worriers

I hope you read the title of this essay and quickly thought it to be a play on the term “weekend warrior” along with some familiarity with it. 

I came to understand the term “weekend warrior” in this way: My high school best friend’s father was a longtime member of the National Guard. He explained that members of the regular army would refer to guardsmen as “weekend warriors” because they only drilled one weekend a month (and two weeks a year).  

So what is a weakend worrier? He or she is the Sunday worshipper who gives little, if any, attention to personal and family worship during the week. Serious time in Scripture and prayer during the week is foreign to the individual and so, when Sunday arrives, dropping into a lower gear and engaging in an hour or two of activity focused on God and not self is equally foreign. 

Worriers are those who seem to endure worship services rather than engage in them. They participate, but often merely as a means to make the time pass a bit faster. The worry is that other important or pleasurable things are not getting done or will be delayed if the service “runs long.” This suggests worship is just another appointment on the weekly schedule. 

Worship is weak on the weekend because it is weak through the week.  Consider this: If I am spending significant time each day in the Scriptures, prayer, and song then Sunday worship becomes a natural, comfortable, and desirable extension of my personal daily worship. Sunday finds me doing with other believers what each has been doing privately all week long. The excitement that prompts dispells worry about the service running long and one might be a bit sad that the time passed so quickly. 

It is a critical waypoint on the journey of spiritual growth when Sunday worship comes a thing you “get to” do and not “have to” do.