The core of any church’s ministry is relationships. Our vision is to be a family of disciples of Jesus who make more disciples, and our strategy for doing that is to connect people to God and other people, to grow in our faith and knowledge of Jesus, and to serve like Jesus. All of that depends upon our abilities to form and nurture relationships, and that means we must meet together.
Hebrews 10:25 encourages us in this saying, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” This is the verse that we like to use to convince people that they to be in church on Sunday mornings (and yes, you really ought to be here), but the verse should convince us that our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ is of eternal importance.
Initially, the writer of Hebrews points out that meeting together is a matter of encouraging one another. Then he amplifies this by referring to “the Day,” when Jesus will return; in other words, as Jesus’ return gets closer, we should encourage each other even more. And to do that, he says, we must meet together.
Do you need more encouragement these days? Who doesn’t? God knows that we need encouragement in our faith and in our daily lives; he knows it because he made us for relationships. Acts 2:46 tells us that the early church met together daily, both in the temple courts and in their homes. They ate together, and they praised together. Verses 44, 45 say that they even shared everything they owned in common and that gave to anyone who had needs. That’s encouragement.
Since we know that we need encouragement and since we know that every moment Jesus’ return is closer, shouldn’t we work on meeting together more? If we look at the attendance figures, we can see that are starting to form bad habits of not meeting together. Let’s reverse the trend and meet together to encourage each other. By all means, make it a habit to worship together on Sunday morning, but also try to meet with smaller groups, both in the church in study groups and outside the church in home-based groups. The Day is coming; let’s be ready!