another rant: worship service distractions

Some things will never cease to amaze me. Or maybe annoy would be a better way to put it. No matter how often they happen, I think I'll always react with the same frustration at being stuck in such dire circumstances. Today's exhibit is distractions during a sermon at church. There are very few things I hate more than listening to a pastor and having my concentration snapped by some nonsense that should never take place in a sanctuary. Cell phones are a big one but thankfully they're pretty rare in my church and thus are generally not a big intrusion on my quality of life on Sunday mornings. Members who can't seem to keep their mouth shut for longer than two seconds (usually teenage girls, of course) are another. But this also isn't a looming issue at my church--surprisingly given the large number of said persons--and so it's not something that concerns me all that much. But loud babies...that's another story.

These days more and more Sunday sermons seem to resemble long plane flights. Not in that they're boring, or that there's nothing to do, or that they just seem to drag on endlessly. (Those could, however, also be true on some occasions.) But I know before sitting through each that there will undoubtedly be one or more screaming babies that annoy the heck out of me and that I won't be able to do anything to avoid. Frustrating as it is, folks like me have no choice but to sit there and barely contain our anger and desire to go deal with the problem ourselves while struggling to stay focused on whatever it is we were doing. I know when I walk through the church doors that no matter what, at some point in the service there will be a baby crying to break the otherwise peaceful atmosphere. Even worse, sometimes the mother will let this go on for minutes before finally taking the child to another room, if she ever does at all.

Now I lack patience with lots of things, but especially with noisy kids. Anyone who knows me or has spent much time around me will attest to that. But what really gets me about this is that churches, and mine in particular, go out of their way to provide nurseries to care for small children during the service. We always have plenty of volunteers in separate rooms to take care of kids who obviously aren't old enough to get anything out of the sermon or keep from preventing others from doing so. (Equally as curious is that people actually volunteer to have such pain and suffering inflicted upon them for the entire length of the sermon. I don't understand it--maybe the suffering brings them closer to God or something. But the world needs folks like them so folks like me can keep what little sanity we have.)

And yet, despite all these things, there will inevitably be mothers who will insist on keeping their small children with them during the service and who refuse to remove these children when they become disruptive. I'm sure there are a handful of good reasons for not dropping kids off on the way to the sanctuary, such as if the kid absolutely can't handle being away from his parents (like maybe autistic kids or something--I'm not even a novice on such causes but I'm sure they exist). But such cases, I suspect, are few and far between, so the vast majority of mothers who bring them in are without excuse. And not taking a noisy kid out? There's absolutely no excuse for that. Okay, except maybe if you're suddenly struck with paralysis or on the floor with a broken leg or something, but I've yet to see any such scenarios. Perhaps Pentecostals could get a free pass here. But anyway, the bottom line is there should very rarely be noisy kids in services, and even then they shouldn't be there for more than about 10 seconds. I mean, is this really too much to ask?

But as long as I'm alive I'll be suffering through this. It's been an issue at every church I've attended--not as much so with some as others but it's always there. I just can't understand why some parents are like that but until God gives me the power of mind control over others--which I'm hoping could be any day now--I'll just have to deal with it. Grrrrr......