We were nearing the end of a successful playdate with a friend of my daughters. The girls knew each other from school, and the Mom and I were doing the awkward “getting to know you chat” when she invited us to an event on a Sunday evening.
“Oh that sounds like so much fun! We’d love to go but we go to worship service on Sunday evening”, I responded.
She looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“But don’t you go to church on Sunday morning?” she asked.
“Yes”, I responded.
“Then why do you go again on Sunday night?” She asked.
It probably shouldn’t have, but her question made me pause. I have answered this question before and it has been awhile since I’ve had this conversation. The thoughts that rushed into my head felt rusty. It also felt odd to have to explain this to someone who professed to be a Christian and as far as I knew, attended church regularly herself.
Why did we go to Sunday morning and Sunday evening worship service? The services were similar in format- singing songs of worship (acapella, without instruments), the Lord’s Supper being served to those who had not been at morning worship, and a sermon given by the preacher- a different message than was given in the morning, and prayers.
We also attend a weekly Wednesday night Bible study. The children go to their grade appropriate Bible class and the adults in another Bible class. After class, we have a few songs and a small talk, an “invitation” we call it, to invite people to be baptized or to ask for prayers. After Bible class ends, we generally chat with each other before heading home.
We are at the church building three times a week for these opportunities and often meet outside of the church for other activities. Some purely social and others to spread the gospel or encourage each other in our faith. But why?
My thoughts whirled around me. A scripture popped into my head, Hebrews 10:24-25, “… and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”
The concept to attend church services is Biblical, written in scripture. Assembling together, worshiping together, is important for us as individuals so we can learn God’s word and apply it to our lives. It is also an important way to encourage each other. God gave us the church (the people), so we could learn and grow together. Life in this broken world is difficult and being a Christian can also be hard. Following God’s word alongside other like minded Christians makes life’s challenges easier and helps keep us on the right road.
Church attendance is commanded. But if we go once a week, is that enough? We have even seen many churches who had multiple services, going down to one a week, for various reasons. Many of these reasons have a practical component that make logistical sense, like a small group of older Christians where many can’t drive safely in the dark and frankly others seem to have cut down on the number of services because it is cutting into their free time.
As a Christian parent, one of my biggest goals besides getting myself to heaven, is for my kids to go to heaven too. To do that, they will need to cultivate and have a faith of their own. If that is one of my biggest goals in life, I have to show them how important having an active, present faith is. I have to show them through my actions which highlight my priorities, that worshiping God is of utmost importance. Can I show them that in just one hour a week? If I am saying “no” to additional worship services because there are other ways we’d like to spend our time, is church service really that important to me? If it’s not important to me, how can I tell my kids it should be important to them?
My son entered and exited the baseball world very quickly last year, it wasn’t a good fit for him or our family. There was a lot that struck me about the sport or more importantly, how intensely parents took the sport. We were expected to attend multiple practices a week and a two hour game. Missing practice often meant sitting innings out. There would be batting cage meet ups and some kids were even taking private pitching and hitting lessons on top of team practices. I am all for kids having an activity they are passionate about, especially one that keeps them active but this sport was asking a lot of 9 year olds and their families. It occurred to me “Baseball is their religion” and something in my head clicked.
Baseball is how they spent their time as a family. It was no big deal for them to go to more than one practice a week because practice is how you get better. They would take every opportunity for their child to sharpen their skills because baseball and being good at baseball, is what is important to them. The baseball field is where their community is, their kids’ friends and their own friends are. These friendships are then taken off the field and into each other’s personal lives.
If we draw the parallel between baseball practice (or any other sport or activity) and attending church service, it is easy to see that the more we attend an activity, 1. The more important it is to us and 2. The stronger our skills in that activity will be.
If that is the case, why would we NOT want to attend every worship service possible? Why would we not want to take every opportunity to praise our awesome God, to learn more about Him? Why would we not want to see our friends, strengthen our community, walk through life together outside of the church building walls? How can we expect ourselves or our children to have faith and a relationship with God, if it is rarely “practiced”? If we don’t actively participate in faith building activities, we can’t expect our faith to grow and mature. I don’t think many people would expect their kids to become a major league baseball player if they were only throwing a ball around once a week. Can we expect ourselves or our children to get to heaven with minimal church attendance?
Back to my conversation with this Mom. I took a deep breath to gather my thoughts and then said, “We want our children to grow up to be faithful, Christian adults. We want them to know that worshipping God and learning more about Him is one of the most important things they can do with their time and they should take every opportunity possible to do it”. She nodded her head and we continued to chat until it was time to go home.
Having answers to these questions, even with a pause, is one way we can share our faith and our “why” we do or don’t do certain things as Christians. Being prepared to answer takes premeditated thought and you guessed it, practice! to be able to share when the occasion arises. Sometimes we will make mistakes in our answers or come up with a better answer at a different time, teaching us a new way we want to approach this topic when the next opportunity comes. We’d love to share more about Jesus and how we worship Him at Santa Clara Church of Christ. Come visit us!
