I had a strange train of thought this evening, but it lead to an interesting insight, and I wanted to share it. I have been working at my church for 7 years (give or take…long story). We have 5 services a weekend 4 of which I am responsible for but I cover the 5th service some times as well as all the special stuff; business meetings, prayer and praise nights, singles events, ect…  Now we didn’t always have 5 services when I was hired we only had 2, but we went to 3 pretty quick, and have been a 4 for years now. So lets say it averages out to 4 services every weekend for 7 years.

Our senior Pastor make a point of telling everyone regularly people only come to church on average 2 times a month.  Ok fixing to break out the math so stay with me.  Giving our average attender the benefit of the doubt, lets say they come 3 times a month in 1 year they will attend 36 services (3×12). Keep that number in mind.

In the 7 years I have been at my church I have directed approximately (4x52x7) (#of services x weeks per year x years) = 1,456 services.  Now I know it’s not a competition, cause if it was I would be wining, but how far ahead of the average attender am I? Easy enough to find out, take my total number of services and divide it by the the number the average attender gets in a year and that should tell me how many years of church they need to go to church to catch up to me.  The answer is 40 Years!

Which is funny because I don’t feel like I am carrying around 40 years of theology, I mean I’m not even 40 years old yet. In most schools an  MDiv (Masters of Divinity) is between 72-106 hours. According standard convention it takes 5,000-10,000 hours to master a subject.  So when it comes to directing I sit right in the middle there, WAY more then an masters degree, but not even 1/5 of the way mastering my craft. The good news about that … it means I still have more to learn.