Cockroaches in the church

There are few critters in the world that cause stronger reactions in people than do cockroaches. My worship team got to church on Sunday at our usual hour before the service to do a final run-through on all the songs. And we discovered a big fat live cockroach on the church floor near the front where the worship singers stand. I ignored it as I do most things in life that don’t interest me very much. But Wendy went over there and pick the cockroach up in her hands to take it outside before she killed, so that we would not have its eggs left laying around in the church for more cockroaches to come in the future.

Now the cockroach itself had caused varying levels of shudders and eeeckks out of different people, but when Wendy picked in up in her hand, that caused a much larger reaction in most everyone! People were totally grossing out about the idea of touching it with the bare hands. Personally I thought it was hysterically funny, especially about how matter of fact Wendy was about the whole thing. She did the right thing, no matter how distasteful.

I did not do the right thing. I was ignoring the cockroach. In fact I had saw it earlier when I first arrived (I was the first person there) and it was a big mama - hard to ignore. But I did, just hoping it would go away. Wendy did the right thing. As I have thought about this whole incident this week, I have come to realize that we rarely do what is right in the church when we have people-versions of cockroaches, i.e. problems. Problems that need to be dealt with in straight-forward, matter of fact ways, that lead to the right result.

Too often I think most leaders are like me, ignoring the problem until there are too many to ignore any longer. If we had only picked up the first problem and took it outside and dealt with it properly, it would have laid no eggs for your future terrorization.