Let me be honest with you.
I sit in on church services and hear people say that they don’t know what anyone else came to do, but they came to praise the Lord. I hear others remarking how the gathering is for the primary purpose of worship. Don’t get me wrong, praise and worship are essential for us as believers individually and corporately.
Yet if the whole point of gathering is to just lift my hands and praise the Lord, I don’t have to drag my carcass out to a building to do that I can do that at home. If the primary purpose is to hear the word of God preached, well guess what, I can get that done at home as well.
It doesn’t take much then to come to the conclusion that the primary purpose of meeting together as brethren has to do with something we can experience together that we would suffer from without it. That leads us to the theme of mutual edification and of course fellowship.
The experience of sitting in a seat (standing at the appropriate bits) as part of row of other people sitting in seats (standing at the appropriate bits), and looking up at a group leading singing and then some dude or dudette talking at me, before being dismissed seems to miss this purpose pretty significantly.
Am I edified by seeing the bulk of the work of it done by a group of others? Well, actually, yes. Yes I am. The songs can be moving and uplifting. What the dudette has to say can be stirring and stimulate the passion for following Jesus Christ. I am edified. But … and here’s the thing … I can get all that at home. I can. I do, often.
The aspect then of MUTUAL edification and fellowship requires a lot more engagement and interaction than a lot of experiences provide. And just because it’s the way it has always been done, and just because attendance is the measure of spiritual commitment in some places, that does not mean we’re living any better lives as a community through these experiences.
And if we’re not providing the platform to have mutual edification and deepening real fellowship corporately as we gather …
Might as well stay at home.
Just saying.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 