Sundays

I didn’t make it to church this morning. As I type, the church with whom we participate is in the middle of their weekly announcements. Our family is here at home – typing away on the computer, texting family members, holding and petting dogs. These are our current activities as the announcements are given from a stage across town.

This wasn’t our plan for today. We got up early this week with intentions to attend the corporate assembly as well as our respective Bible classes. We had our coffee. We watched the news. We agreed around our second cup of coffee that we wouldn’t make it to Bible class today. She watered the garden, and I made the bed. She fed and brushed the dogs. I played around on social media. As church drew nearer, we both realized how quickly our morning had passed. We needed to leave, and neither of us had even showered. Despite our intentions, we would not be present for church today.

After a lifetime of Sunday morning church attendance (my personal record is conservatively 95% or better since childhood), it’s an odd feeling to miss the weekly gathering with our local congregation. In my life as a professional minister, I was literally paid to be at church every Sunday. All I have ever known, all I’ve ever been required, is to attend church on Sunday mornings. Don’t get me wrong – these have been formative and meaningful experiences throughout my life. I’m thankful to have Godly people in my past and present with whom to gather for study and worship and fellowship and the occasional potluck. It is for some of these reasons I planned to attend our local assembly today. We simply didn’t make it.

I feel guilty for not being there. Mostly because this discipline of churchgoing has been ingrained in me from infancy. At the same time, I feel a new freedom to “skip” when I choose now that the church isn’t paying me to attend or counting my absences against me. I miss seeing a few people today. I don’t miss the pretense, the small talk, the pleas for my financial contributions. (Our church does better with most of these things than others we have experienced – significant reasons why we chose to participate with them in the first place.) I stopped “dressing up” years ago, otherwise I would appreciate a Sunday morning without need of suit or tie or fancy golf shirt. Most Sundays I attend worship in my work clothes, ready to clock in at Starbucks shortly after. Sundays function a bit differently for me now.

In recent years, the Sundays we have “skipped church” have often become opportunities for spiritual dialogue, study, and sharing among our family at home. Thanks to my wife (the leader of all spiritual initiatives for our family), we have completed Bible studies and in-depth workbooks with our teen and college-aged children. Our family has watched the Chosen series from the beginning – oftentimes as an alternative to the weekly corporate assembly in our local auditorium. My kids have shared thoughts around communion, and we have taken this together as a family. My attendance record “at church” on Sundays is the lowest it has ever been. My experience of meaningful spiritual engagement on Sundays, at home, with my family, has multiplied significantly over this same period.

I admire those who attend our big room corporate assemblies with joyful enthusiasm. I’m blessed to know many whose church attendance has nothing to do with guilt or obligation or fear of what others will think if they miss too often. I need these people in my life. I need to see and hear them worship and I need their spirit to rub off on me. These are the people who make corporate assemblies essential to my own spiritual health and development. These are some of the reasons I don’t plan to skip church again next week or on a regular basis here forward. I need to see Jesus in others.

There will always be need for corporate assemblies among fellow believers. This is where we worship and fellowship and encourage while reminded there are others in the world who compose our larger Christian family. Typically, these gatherings happen in big rooms – auditoriums, assembly halls, arenas. Other times, they occur in smaller spaces – living rooms, garages, coffee shops, and pubs. When we think of “church” (the gathering, the event), we envision worship leaders and public speakers addressing large audiences, from a stage, with a thoughtfully planned schedule of events designed to fit neatly into 60 minutes. Gatherings like these occur in big rooms. We count things in these spaces – minutes left on the clock, dollars offered through various means, and the number of people present. It’s easy to become a number here. It’s possible to be missed because our absence hurts the bottom line – the statistical averages suffer when bodies and dollars go missing. I’m painting with broad strokes here. I’m hopeful this is not the case for your church or mine.

For some, the corporate assembly involves fewer people, in more intimate spaces. Worship and prayers led by those moved to do so, devotional thoughts and encouraging words shared by those with something on their heart, communion offered from crystal glasses and plastic cups as found in kitchen cabinets and cupboards, offered by men, women, and children, for all to share as one. Bible studies happen here. Sermons happen here too – less polished, less constrained by time and less pressured to fill the allotted time. Worship happens here. No need for programs or presentations. No need for microphones, A/V booths, bulletins, ushers, or security guards. Hopefully, no need to segregate ages for children’s church or youth group so the adults can relax and enjoy a comfortable and controlled environment. All this feels a bit like “church” at home with my family. Could it be that the best way to nurture deep and authentic family-like relationships in our churches is to “do church” in gatherings like these? Something about this seems very biblical. Probably because it is.

Okay, so here’s the deal. My family needs your family to commit to something like this so we can gather in worship, prayer, and communion. My people need to hear encouraging words from your people, and hopefully mine have something encouraging to offer in return. Together, we need to study Scripture and wrestle with texts and share insights. Our kids need to lead some of these discussions – something they can do in living rooms and dining rooms and the basements in which we assemble at our respective houses. We need to assemble regularly, but not for the sake of attendance. Sunday nights might work better than Sunday mornings. We may need to take a week off every now and then due to conflicts that arise with work, life, or family. We may choose to assemble at a park or in a public space here and there to invite or involve new people in our community. We may even substitute a service project for our “worship service” a few times a year, leveraging our normally scheduled time for a slightly different purpose. All these are things being done through nearby gatherings scattered quietly around the place where you live. No signage. No buildings. No websites. You don’t even know they are there.

We are committed to ongoing participation with our local church here in Colorado Springs. Our family will be present for most of the big room assemblies, but not all. Some weeks we will miss, others we will skip. Not because we are “forsaking the assembly” or because we don’t care. Mostly because we are human, and with all other humans who aren’t paid to be there – including elders, deacons, and ministry leaders – we will sometimes be elsewhere. That’s not to say the big room assembly is unimportant, or to suggest we care less about this now than we have in the past. I continue to wrestle with the church I find in the New Testament compared to those I find today. There’s more to being and “doing” church than an hour on Sundays. There are other places to gather and with different groups of people. Jesus remains our hope, our message, our common bond – this must always be. But our modes and methods? The places we gather, the things we count and measure, the metrics used to determine “success” and “failure” in our churches? I’m not sure about all these. There should be more to our why, what and how that invokes critical assessment and creative solutions to the programs and presentations that have become commonplace in mainstream North American Evangelicalism.

Our plan is to be “back in church” this coming Sunday. I look forward to this. There are a few people I’m always glad to see, and I am thankful for the opportunity to worship alongside fellow believers. There may come a time when my family does this with a smaller group – in the living rooms, basements, and backyards of our respective members (participants). There’s something I like about this. If that day comes, maybe our little group can meet up with your little group and another little group nearby every now and then. We can get all our groups together and worship as a big group. We can serve together. We can support one another. We may need to rent a gathering space on occasion, but the expense will be minimal compared to the mortgage most churches carry from year to year. It will be worth the effort. The big room corporate assembly will always be special – the one place where we can gather a bunch of fellow believers and hear all the voices singing and see hope in all the faces and be reminded that we are not alone on this journey.

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