CHURCH,
ATTENDANCE

MANY people have a feature called PIP, picture-in-picture, on their televisions. It means that you can look at your show and at any time bring up a little screen in the corner that has another channel going. You can watch a movie on the main screen and a football game on the little PIP screen. But the PIP is not the main show. The main show is what covers most of the screen. The PIP is simply another show to glance at while you’re watching the main show on the television.

For many of us who attend church, the service is like a PIP. People go to church and receive a PIP experience. They receive spiritual information, hear spiritual truth, and sing spiritual songs, but it’s not the main show. Instead, when they leave church is when the main show begins. They go back to work, family, and life—back to day-to-day struggles. Sunday morning is only PIP, something people glance at while they enjoy the main show.151

[Focus; World, Conformity to]

1 John 2:15–16

A MAN walked into a donut shop and, with a smile, asked for five donuts and a Diet Coke. Now, that Diet Coke was not going to cancel out the negative effects of five nonnutritional, sugar-soaked, fat-filled, donuts.

Some Christians think that “diet church” on Sunday morning will cancel out sinful living Monday through Saturday. It just doesn’t work that way.152