{"id":1319,"date":"2015-05-18T19:19:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T00:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2015-07-05T21:41:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T02:41:24","slug":"church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=1319","title":{"rendered":"Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Place<\/a>\n

Church.<\/p>\n

I go to one.<\/p>\n

Church, that is.<\/p>\n

I hear that going to church is becoming increasingly rare.\u00a0 That\u2019s according to the latest survey by Pew Research<\/a>. They say the number of people going to church is dwindling.\u00a0 Ok, they say it is dropping like a stone, actually.\u00a0 The biggest drop off appears to be millennials, including millennials with young children.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s too bad.\u00a0 I feel it is too bad mostly for reasons of faith and belief.\u00a0 But there are practical reasons as well.<\/p>\n

So for all the \u201cnones\u201d out there, even if you feel that church isn\u2019t for you, I\u2019d ask you to reconsider.<\/p>\n

Let me give you three practical things you (and your children) can learn from going to church.\u00a0 Or, for that matter, the mosque or synagogue.<\/p>\n

First, at church you learn how to sit still for an hour.\u00a0 This is an extremely practical skill.\u00a0 It gets you ready for all those dreadful meetings and conference calls you will have to endure at work.\u00a0 And for your children it is an absolute God send (pun intended). I teach a lot of kids and let me tell you, we\u2019re losing the art of \u201csitting still.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, your kids are going to tell you that they are bored.\u00a0 Hey, depending on what church you go to you might even be bored.\u00a0 But haven\u2019t you heard?\u00a0 Being bored is a good thing.\u00a0 In fact, all the latest studies show \u00a0that people\u2019s besting thinking and creativity comes through boredom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to church. Sit still. And yes, get bored. You\u2019re best thinking depends on it.<\/p>\n

Second, at church you learn the concept of giving and philanthropy.<\/p>\n

In my faith we practice tithing or giving ten percent of our income.\u00a0 This always leads to the question, \u201cIs it ten percent of \u201cgross\u201d or ten percent of \u201cnet\u201d? I don\u2019t know the answer to that.\u00a0 I do know that many boomers like me who were brought up in church saw Mom and Dad drop their envelop in the plate and were instructed at a very early age to do the same.<\/p>\n

The idea of generosity, particularly for the poor and disenfranchised, is common across many faiths.\u00a0 But church teaches you how to make this a habit, how to weave it into your lifestyle at an early age.<\/p>\n

One of the many challenges charitable organizations face today is the decline of the institutional donor. The new generation of donors are \u201csituational\u201d donors.\u00a0 That\u2019s ok, but not great.\u00a0 It is hard to imagine great organizations like Red Cross or American Cancer Society<\/a> being built by situational donors.\u00a0Church teaches you that you should give back and support causes even when there\u2019s no earthquake in Haiti or drought in the Sudan.\u00a0 That you should give all the time.\u00a0 Regularly.\u00a0 Dependably.\u00a0 So that organizations that are doing good work can actually do good work.<\/p>\n

Finally, church makes you think about big things.\u00a0 At least it should. Mine does.<\/p>\n

When I say big things, I mean really big things. Understanding good.\u00a0 And bad.\u00a0 Purpose. Meaning.\u00a0 Destiny.\u00a0 Love.\u00a0 Sacrifice. Truth. Mortality.<\/p>\n

Heady stuff.\u00a0 Big stuff.\u00a0 The most important stuff in life, really.<\/p>\n

But if we\u2019re honest with ourselves, most of us would admit these aren\u2019t the things we spend most of our time thinking about. \u00a0We spend most of our time thinking about whether we left the iron on. \u00a0Or something like that. \u00a0And we think about stuff a lot. \u00a0At work we recently did a national study on what people think about most.\u00a0 At number one was \u201cfriends and family.\u201d\u00a0That\u2019s encouraging.\u00a0 But at number two \u2013 by a wide margin \u2013 was \u201cmoney.\u201d\u00a0 People think twice as much about money and finances as they do about life\u2019s meaning and purpose.<\/p>\n

I think that is too bad. Understandable, but too bad.<\/p>\n

Church helps correct that. \u00a0Every Sunday here come all those really big things again. \u00a0Origin. Purpose. Meaning. Morality. Destiny. Good and Evil. Truth. Mortality.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t that church is the only place where a person can learn how to sit still, practice philanthropy and search for meaning.\u00a0 But its track record is pretty good on all three fronts.\u00a0 And you might even stumble over some of that faith and belief stuff.<\/p>\n

So think about it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Place of Worship via flickr under creative commons 2.0<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Church. I go to one. Church, that is. I hear that going to church is becoming increasingly rare.\u00a0 That\u2019s according to the latest survey by Pew Research. They say the number of people going to church is dwindling.\u00a0 Ok, they say it is dropping like a stone, actually.\u00a0 The biggest drop off appears to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[130],"tags":[101,143,132,144],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1325,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}