Church services are gatherings where the faithful worship together, pray together, and receive the word of God gladly in their hearts. However, with life often so busy, many of us find it challenging to maintain our weekly attendance in fellowship.
Are you consistently attending church? Or do you tend to skip for some reason, whether family or work-related? Or perhaps, you don't attend at all because you don't see the reason why?
The Reason Why we Attend
Many Christians, especially young ones, can have an incorrect view of the church service. Some think of it as just a time to worship. Some, a time to be "fed" with the word of God. Others, a time to see their friends and have a fun time with them.
All of those are actually correct when you join them all together, but when one is emphasized over the other we will surely miss the mark as to why we should go to church.
Acts 2:42 enumerates for us the reasons why we go to church:
"And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers."
I know you've probably heard of this, but when we gather in church our purpose is to grow in the word of God, have fellowship with each other, remind each other of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, and then pray for each other. It's that simple.
When we take away any of these reasons to gather, however, we miss the point. We must never take away the teaching of the word (nor downplay its importance), never stop fellowshipping, never fail to remind each other of the finished atoning work of Christ, and never fail to pray for one another.
That said, is it OK for us to skip the gathering every now and then? Hebrews 10 makes it clear this should not be a habit.
"And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching."
Is it a sin to skip the service?
Now this is a very important matter. While we should not desire to intentionally skip the service, there are some inevitable instances where we should not condemn ourselves when we do skip it:
- If our jobs require us to work on Sundays, for example, we should at least try to attend at a later time or another day.
- If we have family emergencies, such as a need to look after a sick family member.
- And other such necessary circumstances where it's simply not possible for us to attend.
The point is, there can be times when missing service is unavoidable. But this is very different from just picking and choosing when we go. Attending church is ultimately about our relationship with God and with fellow believers, whom we call our spiritual family. Our relationship is not one based on duty but on love. There can be duties that go along with love, but love is the driving force. We should ultimately go to church because we love God, we love serving Him, we love being with His people, we love hearing His word, and we love building up the body of Christ.
