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Every Sunday is Gameday

As I often say, “Sunday comes every week.” It’s relentless. I have four Sundays that I can miss a year for vacation and two other Sundays that I can miss for mission trips and/or conferences or consulting. Outside of that, I never miss. I’ve gone to church with a fever, the flu, a stomach ulcer, after spending the entire night in the Emergency Room one time, with a horrible cold, stomach bug, allergies, broke foot – you name it. I don’t miss.

Yesterday I woke up early to get ready for church and as I was getting ready, my back went out on me. The last MRI I had showed a herniated disc to go along with degenerative disc disease and arthritis in my back. Keep in mind, I’ve already had major back surgery for three ruptured discs and I have ongoing back issues. So yesterday my back goes out at 7:30am. I lay down flat on my bed with an ice pack on my back and rested, hoping it would reset itself. It didn’t help. I got up and got dressed, took some pain meds and off I went to church.

I talked with people in the lobby and greeted people like I usually do. I did my parts in the service (Welcome, response, close), but during the rest of the services, I stood backstage in our green room because it hurt too bad to sit down in a chair and then stand back up.

Why do I talk about this? Because Sunday is gameday and as church leaders, we should live for Sunday. If you have a staff member that regularly calls in sick, you have issues that you need to deal with. Sunday is special and we need to make every effort to be at our churches week in and week out (unless we’re on vacation). How about you? What’s the worst pain you endured or put up with during church in order to not miss?