Essential Fellowship

Is fellowship important to you? It is to me, and I am certain that the body of Christ needs good fellowship. As an adult, it is very important for me to be around other Christian adults, socializing, praying together, weeping together, and laughing with each other. It is just as important to keep your kids and youth involved with the church and their peers at church. This week Tammy and I are working hard to get the marriage retreat filled and finalized, and Evan is working on getting some events lined up for the youth for the next two months and Ben is working on February's Senior Adult meeting. Of course, you also understand that the choir will start practicing in February which doesn’t just meet a singing need for Sunday worship but is a great place to fellowship and worship at the same time. Your church staff will be working hard to get social events and opportunities back on the church calendar and planned out, please understand the work and effort that goes into these events and prayerfully consider being apart.

Last week, I watched a parking lot church service online, and I watched as the preacher stood on the porch of His church and preached to people sitting in their cars. He preached for about twenty minutes, they sat in their cars and listened over the radio, then he closed in prayer and went and got into his car and they all drove off. Of course in my mind I couldn’t help but wonder if they went to a restaurant and got out of their cars and went in to eat, or if they went home and sat in their homes until they got up and went to work or school the next day. Either scenario is heartbreaking to me. The church meeting together has always been commanded and so essential that people have been willing to sacrifice their lives for it. Even today, people around the world worship in secret knowing that if they are caught they will lose their life or be severely punished for it. Yet they meet and worship because the benefit is worth the risk.

Acts 8 tells us that people were being hauled out of their houses and placed in prison because they were meeting to worship. My question is when did the church worshiping together become non-essential? There may soon be a day when it is illegal to meet and worship together and have to break the law of the land to worship ,but for now it is a matter of risk verses reward, for me and my house the reward is worth the risk.

Pastor,
Rev. Wayne Marcus