This Term
23 Sep 2021
It is so good to be able to feel that things are back to some kind of normality in church life! Although the two morning services served a purpose, they weren't the same as us all being together on Sunday morning (and showing our faces! and singing!). That unnatural rush away from church at the end of a service has come to an end - we can stop and talk with each other over a drink.
It has also been great to see our weekly activities begin again. The "discoverers" children's group, and the toddler group have started - with strong teams of leaders and helpers, and good numbers coming along. Our group for those of senior school age "Impact" and our ladies "coffee break" continued all the way through COVID online - but both are beginning this term in the flesh. Richard and Colin are continuing to run the fortnightly lads football on Friday nights. These all need our prayers and support.
I would like to draw our attention as a church to two very important items in the weekly church diary. These things did not stop over lockdown, but they've now beguin again as they were - and it's my prayer that over the next year or so they grow.
The first is the evening service. We do not run a second service for folk who can't attend the morning, or just for really "keen" Christians. It exists because it is a right and appropriate way to finish the Lord's day - after all, the whole day belongs to him!
If worshiping the Lord is at the heart of who we are as Christians, then surely we will want to do it more than simply fleetingly one morning a week. We are saved not just as individuals, but together as a people - and so what we do together is of far more importance than what we do privately.
The Lord has ordained special blessing to his corporate "means of grace" - preaching, prayer, the sacraments (lord's supper and baptism) in a way that is different (and yes, greater) than our personal quiet times. We need to worship together more than we think.
I know life is busy, and that Monday is coming. The pressures of family and school and work pile up and we feel them acutely around 6pm on a Sunday night. However, that is the very moment we need our hearts and minds readjusted to who we really are - men and women, boys and girls who belong to Christ. I also cannot think of a habit which will reward our young people through the whole of their lives than meeting with the Lord morning and evening on his day.
From this month I am going to begin a series doing something slightly different in the evenings. I will still be preaching a sermon from a Bible passage - but as I do that I'll be teaching to build up an overview of what we should believe. It has been a historical practice of reformed churches to use evening services to teach through a confession of faith, and I will be using The Westminister Shorter Catechism as a basis. The sermons will be biblical, and applied to us in the 21st century.
As we live in a society that is moving further and further away from God's truth it is vital that as the church we know what we believe and why, and more than that we love the truth and love Christ with all that we are.
The second most important gathering I want to mention is the prayer meeting. When Jesus taught us to pray he told us to begin "Our Father" and not "my father". He assumed we would pray together, and from the start of Acts the early church were constantly in prayer together. There is a very practical reason for this - it is easier to pray when we are praying with others!
Praying together glues a fellowship together more than anything else I can think of. There is a deep intimacy when we, young and old, spend time coming before Christ praising him and humbly asking for help. We share each others burdens as we bring them to our Saviour who cares for us.
Everything we do as a church needs God's help so we must be praying! Yes, it's important we pray in our teams as we run activities - but each activity is an activity of the whole church, so let's pray for everything together, and share the struggles and joys together. It's great that house groups build fellowship and pray together, but we ar one church together (so do prioritise the prayer meeting even over house groups).
I'm not unrealistic. I know how hard it can be to drag yourself out of a warm house after dinner on a Thursday evening. Yet, it is no exagerration to say that the blesssing of being with others who love Christ, coming before his throne of grace can be incalculable.
Both the evening service and the prayer meetings are easy to ignore, and can seem a bit "irrelevant" to the important work of telling others about Jesus. However I am convinced that there is a strong correlation between the health of a church, the health of its outreach, and the health of those services/meetings. After all, God renews his people from the inside out - our work for him is not what counts, rather his work through us (and beyond), and that begins in worship and prayer.
It is striking that the evidence of the three thousand souls that were converted at Pentecost wasn't that they devoted themselves to lots of activity in God's name, but that "they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers". (Acts 2:42) Devotion to other things and not these is ultimately futile.