What are all these services for anyway?
Why They Gather When They Gather
I recently read Mark Dever and Paul Alexander’s How to Build a Healthy Church. It’s an updated and rebranded edition of their 2005 title, The Deliberate Church. That book had a significant influence on my thinking as I was preparing to leave college and begin vocational ministry. It is one of the first books I can recall that advocated for the Regulative Principle, and more generally, a Reformed-ish vision of the church and Christian ministry. Naturally, I was happy to revisit this new edition of their book nearly 20 years later, especially having read much of Dever’s work in the intervening years.
Several insights in the book challenged me. Others piqued my interest. One section that did both was Chapter 10 (pgs. 129-139), which addresses the gatherings of the church. Dever and Alexander list the five gatherings their church (Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.) holds and briefly describes the purpose of each.
They call the Adult Education Hour the main “equipping time.” This gathering parallels what most churches call Sunday School, except classes are less age-focused and more like courses or “core seminars” covering a range of subject areas, such as Systematic Theology, Old Testament, Membership Matters, Apologetics, and the like.
The Sunday morning gathering is described as the main “feeding time.” This is their main worship service in which the people sing, pray, hear the Word preached, and partake of the ordinances.
The Sunday evening gathering is the main “family time.” While a few elements of the morning service are also included in this gathering, it’s much more interactive. Members have the opportunity to share praise items and prayer concerns, and much praying is done over what is shared. Announcements are made about the church’s life and ministries, and a shorter time of teaching (something like a devotion) is given.
The Wednesday evening gathering is the main “study time.” Essentially, this is a time of inductive Bible study, usually through a book of the Bible over an extended period of time.
Finally, their members’ meetings are the main “administrative times.” Most of these services focus upon receiving new members, seeing members out of the body (whether due to transfers or discipline), and other significant measures and concerns the elders have chosen to present to the body.
The leaders at Capitol Hill Baptist (CHBC) would be the first to say that not all their services are equally attended, nor would they say they are all equally important, though they certainly feel they are all important! But outlining their gatherings this way reflects their commitment to gather deliberately.
First, they take seriously Hebrews 10:25, which warns the body not to forsake assembling together, and increasingly so as the Day of the Lord approaches. Second, they see the life of the church as a multi-dimensional reality. Christians need opportunities for worship, service, fellowship, instruction, direction, mobilization, and organization. Despite their 1000+ members (many of whom are commuters) and the challenges of having church gatherings in a downtown location, they have covenanted to have this structure of gatherings.
When many churches are having fewer and fewer gatherings, they have committed themselves to these gatherings with overlapping but distinct purposes.
As for Me and My House…
My church has three weekly gatherings, and two monthly-to-seasonal gatherings. These include Sunday School, Morning Worship, and Midweek Service. Growth Groups (think Small Groups) meet on a monthly/bi-monthly basis, depending on the time of the year. Our business or members’ meetings are much less frequent—perhaps two or three per year.
Can I say that, in my own mind, each gathering has a distinct purpose? Yes, for sure. Can I say that each gathering is presently functioning in such a way that this purpose is clear in everyone’s minds, and experienced as such? No, not at all. Moreover, even if I could say that I had articulated their purposes as well as I possibly could, would that mean that the gatherings would always have the intended impact on those gathered? Not at all.
I can identify several reasons why a gap between intentions and impact exists. Attribute it to poor communication, unclear vision, sloppy planning, or a half dozen other factors. But there is a more obvious problem that undermines every church leader’s ability to plan, structure, and lead church gatherings in the optimal way: people don’t show up.
Nothing will take the wind out of one’s sails more than planning and preparing edifying and purposeful gatherings, only to see a scant few show up. Even when half the full congregation is present, it still feels somewhat unhealthy. Some may take a “glass-half-full” mindset and work with who they have, but they eventually ask themselves privately, “What happens when we get well below half?”
This is the ultimate chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Do church members choose not to come to certain gatherings because they aren’t accomplishing their intended purpose, or do gatherings begin to lose steam and ultimately be discontinued because of the few in attendance?
I cannot speak for all churches, but I suspect that this is like most things: it’s a both/and scenario. Church leaders fail to plan and promote meaningful and beneficial gatherings, articulating their distinct and valuable purposes, leading to less and less engagement. Conversely, as some members prioritize their own schedules, they opt out of certain gatherings. Sometimes they never gave services besides the main Sunday gathering a chance. In other cases, they eventually excised these additional gatherings from their schedules. Consequently, churches decide to meet less and less.
Why We Gather When We Gather
I don’t have a quick or easy solution for this problem. I wrestle with it nearly every week, and especially so from season to season. While I could write a few thousand words about the importance of good planning and clear communication, this would still fall short of advice (or consolation!) many readers are likely looking for. Perhaps an anecdote can begin to point us in the right direction.
An older deacon in our church often tells a story from his years working in an automotive plant. A veteran and union man, this brother had a strong work ethic, demonstrated in long hours and many extra shifts to make ends meet. He did two things that baffled his coworkers. He would go to worship on Sunday morning, then go to work. After getting off work, he’d return to Sunday evening service. (Sometimes the schedule was even more chaotic, depending on which shift he was working.) What really baffled one of his unsaved coworkers was the fact that he wouldn’t just go to a church service on Sundays, but on Wednesdays, too!
His coworker would simply say aloud what so many of our neighbors and friends have wondered about: “What’s the point of that? Did you just not do things ‘right’ on Sunday that you had to go back on Wednesday?” Les, our deacon, would respond by saying, “I don’t know how I would get through the week without Prayer Meeting.”
It's easy to dismiss such a sentiment. Who couldn’t simply say that only a blue-collar Christian man in the 1970s and 80s would think this way? Of course, they would be wrong on two counts. First, such a dismissal rests on a stereotype about what kinds of people take their faith and their church so seriously. Second, and more pointedly, this misses what so many middle-income, twenty-first century Christians so often think: we need our churches, but we don’t need them that badly.
In response, I suggest a change in perspective and a change in grammar.
We need a new perspective which sees ourselves as needy people. What do we need? We need regular worship, fellowship, accountability, encouragement, instruction, edification, rebuke, mobilization, and a dozen other related but distinctly spiritual needs. God’s Word describes and illustrates them frequently and colorfully. We have absolutely no right to assert that God knows our needs less intimately than we do.
Let me hasten to say that recognizing our God-defined needs doesn’t remove the prudence and good judgment needed to determine how frequently each church should gather. However, it will help us do at least two other important tasks. First, it will lead us to consider how the church’s gatherings should attempt to include elements of the above-stated needs. Second, an honest assessment of this will probably lead most churches and Christians to realize that meeting less and less will eventually undermine the body’s ability to grow, learn, serve, and become all that God intends.
This is the change in perspective that we desperately need: knowing that our needs are great, and being together deliberately, biblically, and with some frequency is essential to addressing those needs.
This change in perspective will be more fully realized if we’re also able to pivot in how we speak. Anyone who has been a Christian for a while knows that the church isn’t the building. It isn’t the “organization.” It’s the body, assembled, covenanted together under the Word. As some Christians like to say, the church is constituted by the right preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments or ordinances. Either description complements the same underlying definition: a gathered people.
I cannot help but think that some of our problems with believers forsaking the gatherings of the body stem from a simple grammatical problem. The problem? “Going to church” is a good and appropriate activity for them as Christians. But this ends up being quite different from “being the church.” If you are the church, and “being the church” hinges, in part, on the church assembled (After all, the Greek word for church means assembly!), then taking a lax, casual, or optional attitude to the church’s gatherings is inconceivable.
Do we need to avoid legalistic expectations of members having 100% attendance records? Of course. But legalism seems far from the major problem most of churches are contending with. We’re contending with a mentality that says, “What’s the least number of times we can be together and still have a church?”
We’re swimming in a sea of distraction, apathy, complacency, and misplaced priorities. Remembering how to speak biblically about what we are and who we are is an essential change necessary to reversing these patterns.
Conclusion
Our unsaved neighbors won’t have any obvious way of knowing why we feel we need to be with our church more often than once weekly. But them not knowing is a tremendous opportunity for us. We should live out the full reality of our church’s life. When they question it, we can then describe how that life unfolds across time through different kinds of gatherings. As we do, we should joyfully and honestly say, “And I need every bit of that!”
Ultimately the goal is not for all Christians to agree on the same number or length of gatherings. We should start with the content required for Christian gatherings, and from there begin to reason wisely together about the frequency. Whatever is decided, may we never lose sight of our neediness—of God and of each other.
Follow-Up:
In Newsletter #90 I wrote about my experience at a theological symposium. I reflected on the opportunity such events provide for believers to learn and grow together in community. This week I’ll attend the Free Will Baptist Leadership Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m looking forward to trying to learn with some other brethren this week.
What I’m Reading (or Rereading):
James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky, Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality.
Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory.
Quote of the Week:
I don’t know anyone who likes rebuke. None of us have ever thought, “I just wish I could be rebuked more.” Rebuke often carries connotations of condemnation in our thinking, as we imagine a pointed finger, raised volume, inflammatory language, and judgment. But God’s rebuke is not like that. It is not a precursor to judgment but rather an act of redeeming love. God’s rebuke is never about giving up on us; it’s about investing in us once again. God rebukes us because we need it. In the blindness of sin, we often think we are way more righteous than we actually are and way more faithful than we really have been. We all have the ability to name our sin as something less than sin or to compare ourselves to other sinners and conclude that we are not so bad after all. We are all good at rewriting our history in ways that shift blame away from us onto something or someone else. No matter how long we have followed our Savior, we all continue to need the grace of his loving rebuke. You could say it this way: whom the Lord loves, he rebukes. As Hebrews 3:12 tells us, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”
Paul David Tripp, “The Ultimate Human Diagnostic.”
Common Grace Wisdom: Questioning Assumptions about Morality
I mentioned last week that I had been reading John Gray’s Seven Types of Atheism. While it’s not a long book, each chapter must be read carefully to understand and digest Gray’s arguments. In short, there have been many varieties of atheism through the centuries. Yet Gray argues that many of them ignore the important ways in which they draw on Christian ideas and assumptions in their formulations of belief and morality.
Gray asserts, “The belief that humans are gradually improving is the central article of faith of modern humanism. When wrenched from monotheistic religion, however, it is not so much false as meaningless.” I take Gray here to mean that monotheistic religion—Christianity especially—supplies the moral content and categories needed to even think meaningfully about “gradual improvement.”
Let me pose a question and offer an assignment this week. When you think of your friends, neighbors, or peers who are most antagonistic toward Christianity, how do they defend their understanding of morality and ethics? When they make claims about good or bad, right or wrong, how do they ground them? Try probing this a bit with them and see what you learn.
On My Mind: Reading Lists
It’s that time of the year when book awards are announced, and bloggers/authors roll out their “top books of the year” lists. I’m trying to push through one or two more before publishing my list. What would be on your list?
I’m also thinking about how I’ll formulate my reading list for 2024. It’s a tall task!