This is a question taken up in chapter 3 of the book Rediscover Church, which our elders recently read, which we’ll provide for a book discussion at our March Annual Meeting and which I’m teaching in Sunday school
But this question—the importance of gathering—is more important than ever for Christ’s church. It’s ironic that prior to the pandemic there was already discussion among pastors about a shift among “regular church-goers” from attending weekly to sporadically. Illness or vacations used to be the primary reasons we’d miss church. In the 80’s, I recall schools refusing to schedule sports on Wednesday evenings so as not to conflict with youth group. Today, no time is sacred, not even Sunday morning. This isn’t about nostalgic longing for the “good old days,” or a legalistic view of church attendance, or a heavenly attendance chart used to determine who’s naughty or nice. But it is about the value God’s Word places on church. We see it at the birth of the church, at the end of Acts 2, where we find believers meeting daily; in the well-known admonition of Hebrews 10:25, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing”; and in Jesus’ simple promise, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” As one who loves to travel, whether to see family or to explore God’s great big world, I know that there are occasions when we won’t be able to gather with our home church. Yet I also believe that when Jesus chose the church as the means of expressing His presence and continuing His mission in the world, from its establishment (Matt 16:18), to its authority (Matt. 18:17), to its magnificent beginning in Acts (2:41-47), the “assembling” together as believers was priority. That’s actually what ekklesia, or church, means…a word we find 79 times in the Bible. Yet if the pre-pandemic shift toward sporadic attendance is noteworthy, the shift occurring since the pandemic began is nothing less than profound. While some have given up church attendance altogether, others have gone online instead of in-person. But online church, for all its benefits, does a very poor job of expressing essential aspects of why it is that we gather together. Even The New York Times has called out the problem in a recent article titled “Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services,” where the author makes a compelling case for prioritizing “embodied community.” She writes, “embodiment is a particularly important part of Christian spirituality and theology. We believe God became flesh, lived in a human body and remains mysteriously in a human body.” She goes on to quote one of the authors of Rediscover Church on the importance of rubbing shoulders with others, including those much different than us. She concludes, “These are not mere accessories to a certain kind of worship experience. These moments form and shape who we are and what we believe.” Do you agree? Do you believe that being physically present with others forms us? That there is something significant about people of all stripes coming together regularly to engage in the sacred task of worshiping God, receiving His Word, and experiencing fellowship with His people? According to Rediscover Church, what makes gatherings so powerful is “the fact that you are physically there. You see. You feel. Unlike watching something on a screen, in which you’re bodily removed from the thing you’re watching, a gathering literally surrounds you. It defines your entire reality. God made us soul and body, and somehow, mysteriously, he intertwines them so that what affects the body affects the soul.” Closely connected with this is the fact that we are created in the image of God. As I wrote in my last blog, “Imaging Creatures,” we are image bearers of our God in this world. There are few places this is more profoundly expressed than in the gathering of believers. “In a gathering, we experience what other people love, hate, fear, and believe, and our sense of what’s normal and what’s right can shift comparatively quickly. The loves, hates, fears or beliefs of the crowd become ours. This isn’t surprising. God also made us ‘imaging’ creatures (see Gen. 1:26-28). He created us to image his own righteousness, but we’ve chosen to image other things. This is how cultures form. We image, mimic, or copy the people around us in good ways and bad. Gatherings simply speed up the process.” We are, all of us, being formed by gatherings of various kinds, not just in the community in which we live, work and play, but in our entertainment, online culture, what we read. My Sunday school class estimated that we spend upwards of 70 hours a week in non-church gatherings of various kinds, taking in worldly content. What we must realize is that, whether we like it or not, where and with whom we invest our time has a formational effect on us. It is one strong reason why meeting once a week with God’s people should be seen as the bare minimum for the sake of spiritual formation among those who have been redeemed by Christ and are pursuing His Kingdom. We need each other. The Christian life, as described in Scripture, is not primarily about my individualistic spiritual pursuit. Rugged, isolationist, Marlboro man spirituality is not Biblical. We definitely need daily time alone with God, but there is at least as much emphasis in Scripture on the importance of gathering together. “Jesus organized Christianity this way. He means to center our Christianity around regularly gathering together, seeing one another, learning from one another, encouraging and correcting one another, and loving one another. Spiritual things happen when Christians stand elbow to elbow, breathe the same air, join our voices in song, hear the same sermon, and partake of the one bread.” In an increasingly isolationist world and a Christian sub-culture that diminishes worship together, the Bible speaks a different word…one that prioritizes koinonia, community, regularly gathering with God’s people. Herein lies the rub (thanks Shakespeare!), gathering occasionally is not difficult for most Christians to embrace. It's the regularly part that causes us to stumble. Why is it so important to gather regularly? It goes back to our role as image bearers and to spiritual formation. Years ago, I hiked the Grand Canyon, which means I hiked down to the canyon floor and, more importantly, I hiked back up again! It was hard. In the months leading up to that trip, I hiked every week, to train my body for the big hike, as per the counsel of my “guide” (thanks Rick!). The point of those weekly hikes was formational, to train my body for the physical strenuousness of the task ahead. If I decided, in place of weekly hikes, to just go on a long walk once or twice a month, I’m pretty confident I would still be in that canyon today. (No joke!) Just as occasional walks have little formational impact on us physically, occasional church attendance minimizes the formational impact it has on us spiritually. More than that, it hinders our ability to have a spiritual impact on others. It’s hard to speak meaningfully into the lives of others if we see them so rarely we struggle to remember their names! By all means, don’t give into legalistic church attendance. But, equally important, don’t let that pendulum swing to the other, very unbiblical extreme where weekly worship is marginalized. Maybe it’s time we give some gentle push back against activities scheduled on Sunday morning. Would it be a terrible thing to tell our civic or sports organizations that we prioritize church Sunday mornings? Or when we’re out of town, maybe we should do some advanced research on a good church to attend. Again, it’s not about legalism or appearances or gold stars on a heavenly chart. It’s about the priority God’s Word places on Christian fellowship and our need to image Christ to others, and to let others image Christ to us. So, my prayer for us is that, as we read in Hebrews 10:25, we will not give up meeting together, but we’ll be faithful in gathering so that we might encourage one another and “all the more as you see the Day approaching!”
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Dan GannonDan has ministered at Renton Bible Church, with his wife Debbie, since 2003. Archives
June 2022
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