Joy in the Journey: Consumer Mindset

In the Gospel today, Jesus describes those attempting to enter as saying: “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” This was their definition of knowing Him. But knowing Jesus involves so much more. If we listen to His words, He is inciting us to action, to be a part of His mission. There is no ‘associate membership’ in the Church. 

So many church goers across all Christian denominations have a consumer mindset: what has the church done for me lately? Is the preaching good enough, do I like the bulletin, the music needs to be better. While we should expect the Church to put forth it’s best in this regard, we should first ask ourselves, “how am I participating in the Lord’s mission?” It is often said that 80% of the work in a parish is done by 20% of its members. Imagine if we each contributed just 1-2 hours per month of volunteer time with our parish. That would be up to 2500 hours of volunteer effort. Imagine what the Lord could do with that. This is your church, you are not a consumer of it.