Karen - I'm right there with you. I know that we and most of our friends LOVE to be at church. There are wonderful people there and great teaching and it's so uplifiting to be with other believers. We are together with our church family almost every day in one form or another and if we're not together, we talk on the phone.
I guess what gets my ire up is when someone says that if you're not at church every time the doors are open then you're less of a Christian and falling away - if you don't have the DESIRE to be there every waking moment, then something is wrong. Honestly, I need ONE night home with my family and unless that night is taken up with something extremely important at church, then I'm home - even if something that's going on at church at all. I have a very close immediate family - I have teen agers, a first grader and a preschooler and we all get along beautifully. I don't WANT to separate from them all the time with me going to this meeting and dumping the kids in the nursery, having my teens go someplace else, etc. For some things, that's fine. On Sunday, my teens are with DH (I'm in the sound booth working) and the little ones are in Sunday School. But then sometimes we have meetings Sunday night where the kids are put into the nursery and the teens are helping to watch them. The meeting is good - but not necessary for me. If I went to everything the church offered, my children would be separated from me for much of the time. Now, I homeschool but think of those who's kids go to public school - and the parents work. Add in a meeting every night or every other night at church and there's no time for ME to raise my children - instead of someone else. See, the Bible never says to put your kids in the nursery or in Sunday School to let someone else teach them of the Lord - WE are to do that. How are we to do that when we're never together? Or ARE we supposed to all go to meetings to let others do that (even if the child is with us)? Deuteronomy 6:7 (and 11:19 says almost the same thing) "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." How am I to do this when I'm going to church meetings all the time?
I'm sorry, I think our responsibility is to God above all. That does not equal church - but God. He is to be Lord over church, our home life, our sports events and our leisure time. God gave us a mandate to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and to teach our children DILIGENTLY - when we sit in our house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down and when we get up. We just cannot do that when we are busy with "church" stuff. Church is vitally important and we need to be sure that we're involved in a good church getting good solid teaching and using our ministry gifts to further the kingdom but I don't think that someone who is at church every waking moment is any better a Christian than someone else who comes to church faithfully, is serving - but is not there on Wednesday nights because that's one night they decided to do "family night". I think he just has his priorities straight.
