Here’s some good news and bad news for pastors:
Good News: You baptized seven people today in the river.
Bad News: You lost two of them in the swift current.
Good News: The women’s group voted to send you a get-well card.
Bad News: The vote passed by 31-30.
Good News: The elder board accepted your job description the way you wrote it.
Bad News: They were so inspired by it that they formed a search committee to find someone capable of filling the position.
Good News: The youth of the church came to your house for a visit.
Bad News: It was in the middle of the night and they were armed with toilet paper and shaving cream.
Good News: The Church Council has agreed to send you to the Holy Land for study.
Bad News: They are waiting for war to break out before sending you.
Good News: Church attendance rose dramatically the last three weeks.
Bad News: You were on vacation.
Some of the bad news over the last few years has been a decrease in church attendance. The fears over COVID and the shut down of all “non-essential” services, which included churches, showed us just how precious fellowship really is.
During that time many people dropped out of going to church altogether. Most of us pastors became “tele-evangelists” and produced videos of our sermons so that people at home could watch us and stay, at least remotely, connected.
But it wasn’t enough, as we all experienced. Church is a gathered event. It involves Christ followers gathering together to teach one another and minister to one another.
What is a shame is that now that COVID is over, some have fallen out of the habit of going to church. It is easier to stay at home, sit in your LazyBoy recliner with your pajamas on with coffee in hand, allowing your children to play in their rooms while you watch the sermon on tv.
But that isn’t church. Church is a gathered event.
Now, we all have times when we don’t want to go to church.
The story is told of a wife who woke her husband up for church, but he only groaned and rolled over in bed. She coaxed him again, urged him, and finally ordered him to get out of bed and go to church. But he said, “I don’t want to.” She asked why not and he answered. “Because it’s boring. And because they don’t like me there.” That’s when she got forceful: “That’s not true: It’s not boring and people do like you. And besides that, you have to go: you’re the pastor!”
Oh, I admit that there are some times that I’ve not wanted to go. But I don’t come to church just because I’m a pastor. I come to church because I love Jesus and I love you. I want to be here. I want to be with you. I enjoy teaching you. I enjoy worshipping with you and serving alongside you.
Getting out of the habit of going to church is nothing new. Many people have struggled with it because they don’t perceive the real value of it—not until it was taken away during COVID.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote in the shadow of the Third Reich and Hitler’s rise to power, wrote a little book entitled Life Together, which reflects upon the illegal seminary in Finkenwalde and their fellowship together as religious freedom evaporated in Germany. Here are some of the key insights from this little book.
First, every gathering of the local church is a gift of God’s grace.
Bonhoefer writes:
So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s Word and sacrament.
Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing. They remember, as the Psalmist did, how they went ‘with the multitude . . . to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday’ (pp.19-20).
Whenever we gather together as a church, we receive a gift from our gracious God. Every gathering of the saints provides a taste of the greater reality of heaven, and we look forward to the day when all the saints will be together with our Lord forever.
Consider Hebrews 12:22-24:
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Gathering together with our family of faith is a blessing that becomes all the more apparent when the gift is taken away. Let us prize the grace we have been given in our fellowship, and look forward to the day when we can know it again.
Second, we experience the love and presence of God through one another in Christ.
If you feel grief and loneliness, it is only right to feel this sense of loss. Two-dimensional fellowship through technology is a gift, just as was Paul’s ability to send and receive letters from prison. However, Paul still longed for face-to-face interaction with his disciples (1 Thess. 2:18; 3:17).
Bonhoeffer elaborates on this as he describes the blessing of physical presence with other believers:
The believer therefore lauds the Creator, the Redeemer, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the bodily presence of a brother. The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other’s benedictions as the benediction of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians! (p. 20)
It’s like the story about a little girl who can’t get to sleep. She knocks on the door of her parents’ room and says, “I can’t sleep.” One parent gets up, goes with the little girl child back to her room, gets her back into bed, and tries to offer reassurance and comfort. The parent says, “You know that we love you, right?” “Yes,” nods the child. “And you know that God loves you, right?” “Yes,” again, says the little girl. “And you know that God will be right here with you, watching over you all night long. You know that, too, don’t you?” The little girl says yes, and smiles as the parent kisses her good night and turns out the light.
A few minutes later, there’s a knock on the parents’ door. “Yes?” they ask. The little girl explains, “I know God is with me all night long. But can I still sleep with you? Right now, I need God with skin on.”
We all need a God with skin on. And thankfully God provides that. As we assemble together as the body of Christ on the Lord’s Day, we encounter Christ in his Word and in his people. We know the love of Christ through one another as we serve as his hands and feet. Our gatherings are an incredible gift for us to treasure. It is right for us to desire to be face-to-face with each other.
And so, thirdly, let us thank God for this grace.
In today’s age of individualism, far too many professing Christians see the gathering of the church as an optional activity, and many others are content with “internet church.” Even for those who are faithful to gather, the weekly blessing of assembling together is easily taken for granted.
Bonhoeffer warns against this, and calls the church to thanksgiving:
It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed.
Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren. (p. 20)
And this brings us to our passage in Hebrews, one that is likely familiar to many evangelical Christians.
19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
The theme of these verses is drawing near to God, but we cannot truly draw near to God without drawing near to our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is largely through them, as Bonhoeffer attests, that we experience the presence of God and come to know more of His love (cf. Eph. 3:18, “with all the saints”).
People throughout the ages have found reasons not to go to church. The early church had a fall-off of attendance due to persecution, ostracism, apostasy and arrogance. Today church attendance is rarely dangerous or costly like that, rather we miss due to laziness or lack of proper priorities.
Some think, “I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian. In fact, I worship God better in a fishing boat or a deer stand.”
No, you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian, but you do have to go to church to be a growing, devoted Christian. We survive in our spiritual life precisely because we surround ourselves with brothers and sisters in Christ who support us and personally and regularly exhort us and sometimes confront us so that we don’t waver from the truth.
As the evil days surround us, as wickedness and wokeness and the deceitfulness of sin cloud our vision, we so need others to help us remain faithful to Jesus Christ. Just listen to the warning we saw earlier in Hebrews 3:12-13.
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Any one of us could develop “an evil unbelieving heart” and “fall away from the living God.” It can happen. And because it can happen, we need to “exhort one another every day” so that “none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Satan is a master of deceit, and he covers the lure in seductive ways so that we think we are getting something good, something that will truly make us happy, but underneath is the hook and we find that the pleasure we thought we were getting is so, so short-lived and the consequences are harsher than we could have imagined.
Without intentional, faith-building togetherness we lose our zeal, drift from God, and become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We can’t see it. We are deceived. If someone doesn’t snatch us (James 5:19; Jude 23), we make shipwreck of our so-called “faith” and perish in unbelief.
By the way, this help doesn’t come merely by showing up at church on Sundays. Unless you intentionally interact with others, ask for prayer, reveal your burdens and temptations, get involved in studying God’s transformative Word together, you may find that just coming to church on Sunday morning does very little for you. Take advantage of the opportunities to expose ourselves to the mirror of God’s Word in community where you can tell the truth about yourself and hear the truth about yourself. Attach yourself to a few people who dare to tell you the truth and who will hold you accountable for seeing yourself as you really are and making changes in your life. All of these things is what the church fellowship is really about.
Battling unbelief, or to put it positively, fighting the good fight of faith, that is what church is really about. We live in a world six days a week that encourages unbelief and doubt and the deconstruction of our faith. The battle isn’t over and believing it is makes us extremely vulnerable to the subtleties of unbelief. It is a life-long struggle.
At the end of his life, Paul looked back over several decades of being a Christian and says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” He had fought the good fight to keep the faith all his Christian life (2 Tim. 4:7).
And do you know Paul’s secret? He always surrounded himself with other brothers in Christ. Although he seems like a gung-ho, Marine, he was not a loner. Even Seal Team 6 functions as a unit. Paul didn’t believe that he could successfully live the Christian life on his own. He knew that he needed others.
So Paul surrounded himself with Barnabas and Silas and Timothy and Luke and Aristarchus and Mark and Ephphras and others. The one time he was forced to go off by himself to Athens his spirit was almost broken by the overwhelming evil there and he sent immediately for Timothy to join him. This macho man needed Timothy.
We might mistakenly get the idea that Paul’s faith (and the faith of other ministers today) was never in need of human reinforcement. But listen to 2 Corinthians 7:5-7:
5 For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn–fighting without and fear within. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.
Paul felt overwhelmed. He had enemies that fought him and he had fears that raged within his mind. But God comforted Paul. How? “by the coming of Titus.” And in verse 7 you see the ripple effect of eyeball-to-eyeball comforting of one another. The Corinthians comforted Titus and Titus arrived and comforted Paul. Paul was an emotional wreck, but Titus came. Titus gave him a hug, gave him encouragement and prayed for him. That’s what he needed.
Paul knew that he needed others. He knew that he could quite possibly shipwreck his faith if he didn’t have others in his life. You and I need others too. We need close friends; we need the body of Christ—to help strengthen our faith when fear gets the upper hand.
You see, we are constantly being spiritually formed. We cannot help it. But we are either being transformed in a positive direction by truth and grace, or we are being deformed by the world around us in a negative direction through lies and deception.
It’s easy to go with the flow and all too often we find ourselves moving with the flow of the world—into disobedience and sin. Fortunately, God offers us another flow going in the opposite direction. The truth is, we are weak; we cannot often stand on our own and go against the flow. That is why we need a Christian community to surround us and carry us in the direction of positive transformation.
So our author gives us these life-saving, faith-cementing verses:
24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Grace Still Amazes 