I often use the term pew warmers when referring to people who just show up to church on Sunday and do nothing to further the Kingdom the rest of the week. I used to be a pew warmer. I made sure that I showed up to church on Sunday and went back to living my life on Monday. Not much happened during the week because I was more concerned about myself than I was about serving others and being a witness for God. Being a Sunday pew warmer is easy because it doesn’t require anything of you other than doing your weekly deed to charge your Jesus battery.
Every day we should look at our life as an opportunity to not only share the Gospel with others but to live out the Gospel as well. Corporate churches do an amazing job making pew warmers feel comfortable. When you are comfortable, you are not growing in your faith. Challenges and discomfort will force you to grow and rely on God more. For some reason many corporate church bodies try to sedate their audience with passive and uninvasive sermons. While the message might sit well with the pew warmer because they are not challenged, the church is doing a disservice to the growth and development of the individual.
Pew warmers keep the lights on.
Let’s be honest. Pew warmers keep the lights on. It is a numbers game in the church just like it is in any other business. The more people that walk through the church door, the higher probability of donations. When the pulpit message strikes a nerve, more people are likely to turn up their nose. The church realizes this, so they balance out their messages with bland and nonconfrontational sermons that retain the pew warmers. This is why you generally hear the same regurgitated messages week after week after week. There are many parts of the Bible that are never talked about from the pulpit. One of the major topics that sticks out in my mind is the topic of hell.
Pew warmers do not want to hear about hell. They want to hear sermons about love thy neighbor, compassion and caring. They do not have the stomach to hear a sermon series on what hell will be like. These people have been trained for years to rarely ever hear a message on hell, the fall of Lucifer or how sin separates us from God. Sermons should talk about all parts of the Bible including those words that are pleasing to the ears and other messages that make your stomach turn. The entire Bible needs to be preached so that pew warmers are trained to become biblical warriors for Christ.
Matthew 4:4 New American Standard Bible
4 But He answered and said, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God.’”