So this morning i was at a pastor’s breakfast and we were having a time of worship singing and some dude left the meeting to go and answer his cellphone and it brought back one of my favourite grinds to axe. I don’t know why i seemingly feel so proportionately huge on this issue where most other people in my experience don’t but for me it is one of the most offensive and rudest things…

On the me level it’s the whole vibe of you going out to have coffee with me at a restaurant and your phone rings and you answer it. Basically what you are saying to me (via your actions) is that even though you have set aside this time for a coffee time with me, actually ANYONE else in the world with a phone in their hands is more important than me. It could even be a wrong number. So in essence you are choosing a complete stranger who you don’t want to talk to, over me.

As i said, i find it incredibly rude and am surprised that most other people don’t seem to find it as offensive as i do. For example if you were in a movie for an hour and a half you would (hopefully) switch your phone off or on silent and leave it like that til the end. So the movie has your full attention. If you have a doctor’s or dentist appointment or a business meeting you won’t interrupt it to have a chat to me so why can’t you afford me the same courtesy. I want you to know that for the next hour i am choosing above anyone else in the world to spend time with and give my full attention to. We’ve lost that because we have openly welcomed the invasion and invasiveness of the mobile phone into our lives.

Then back to the breakfast, we also have a guy in our church who regularly leaves the worship time and maybe also the preach time to go take a business call. And then this guy leaving a worship session to go take a call. What is more important than communing with the Holy and Awesome Creator God and King Jesus for the twenty or so minutes we are going to sing some songs.

If you were in a one to one meeting with Nelson Mandela or Barack Obama or someone else you see as famous and respectable or the king of a country, you wouldn’t suddenly go ‘oh sorry i have a call, i’ll be back in a minute’ and so possibly it’s a question of not really understanding or knowing or believing that when we are engaged in a worship session it really is meant to be a face to face time of hanging with God. And surely He deserves complete focus and attention in that moment.

The cellphone has become an idol for many of us who worship it or its use or images or sounds that emanate from it and we need to really be more aware.