Considering Our Gatherings: Why Sunday Worship Is “Required”
In three short blog posts, I hope to introduce three words that help set vision and define norms for our gatherings at MHC. I first heard Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman use these words in the context of their churches and found them helpful—and I pray they will be useful for ours as well.
Required
This is how we should view Sunday morning corporate worship: it is a required meeting. There are both biblical and practical reasons we elevate this gathering to “required” status.
Biblically speaking:
Practically speaking:
This is an agreed-upon meeting that our church can plan around and that members can guard on their calendars. This gathering is an essential and explicit part of membership. For this reason, it is included in the church covenant that every member affirms: “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” This line primarily refers to the Sunday morning worship gathering.
Brothers and sisters, the “required” status for Sunday morning worship means that, whenever possible, we should join the gathering. It means we plan vacations, trips, work schedules, and family events around the Lord’s Day gathering of the church.
This does not mean there won’t be emergencies, illnesses, or unexpected events that disrupt our schedule. But because this gathering is “required,” we joyfully treat it as such. As Nate Pickowicz wrote, “Church should be your excuse for missing everything else.” A helpful (though not perfect) rule of thumb is this: if I wouldn’t skip a day of work for it, I probably shouldn’t skip the Sunday morning church gathering for it.
The next two posts will cover two other types of church meetings: members meetings and group meetings. For the sake of both summary and preview, here are the words that correspond to each:
Sunday Morning Worship = Required
Members Meeting = Expected
Group Meetings = Encouraged
See you Sunday!
Required
This is how we should view Sunday morning corporate worship: it is a required meeting. There are both biblical and practical reasons we elevate this gathering to “required” status.
Biblically speaking:
- The Lord’s Day gathering has been the church’s ongoing celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ since the earliest days of the church (Rev. 1:10).
- This kind of regular, habitual gathering is explicitly commanded in Scripture (Heb. 10:25).
- Gathering for worship and mutual encouragement is part of what it means to be a church. The word we translate as “church” in the New Testament is the Greek word ekklēsia, meaning “the gathering” or “the assembly.” Yes, there is more to a church than gathering, but it is certainly not less than gathering.
Practically speaking:
This is an agreed-upon meeting that our church can plan around and that members can guard on their calendars. This gathering is an essential and explicit part of membership. For this reason, it is included in the church covenant that every member affirms: “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” This line primarily refers to the Sunday morning worship gathering.
Brothers and sisters, the “required” status for Sunday morning worship means that, whenever possible, we should join the gathering. It means we plan vacations, trips, work schedules, and family events around the Lord’s Day gathering of the church.
This does not mean there won’t be emergencies, illnesses, or unexpected events that disrupt our schedule. But because this gathering is “required,” we joyfully treat it as such. As Nate Pickowicz wrote, “Church should be your excuse for missing everything else.” A helpful (though not perfect) rule of thumb is this: if I wouldn’t skip a day of work for it, I probably shouldn’t skip the Sunday morning church gathering for it.
The next two posts will cover two other types of church meetings: members meetings and group meetings. For the sake of both summary and preview, here are the words that correspond to each:
Sunday Morning Worship = Required
Members Meeting = Expected
Group Meetings = Encouraged
See you Sunday!