I would like to speak to the much-maligned topic of gathering together in a corporate setting for the worshipping of our Lord God. I say much maligned because in many corners of the church or churchdom today, we hear the denigration of the importance of fellow followers gathering in some regularity to jointly worship our Lord. There is not room in this letter to cover all the Scriptures that speak to this matter, but I will attempt to address enough so that we can have a good grasp of what God thinks about our gathering and the value to us as His subjects.
To begin, we should spend a little space mentioning what the corporate gathering should not be. Yes, while there is high value in our setting aside a time and place to gather together as God’s people, like anything else that is pure and good, sometimes this exercise is tainted and altered to satisfy the desires of man.
To begin with, the corporate gathering is not to be an obligatory attending to satisfy some sense of debt or quota. This is a fine line to navigate, especially with the raising of children. Like many reading this letter, I had a drug problem when I was a kid. My mother drug me to Sunday School, drug me to Sunday morning worship, drug me to Wednesday night prayer meeting, and any other time anyone put a key in the lock of the door of the church building to open it. This could have become a burr under
my saddle had I not been raised in the foundation and teaching of the Scripture.
I might just insert here a plea for those of you raising children, please raise them in the context of a faith community that gathers on a regular basis. It is not a fool proof solution, but you will have far less heartaches later on if they grow up a part of a community of believers in Jesus Christ. But it is important that we understand the gathering together isn’t because of some obligation we feel or roll call we feel the need to answer. To be disciplined and faithful is a good thing, but let’s do it for the right reasons.
Another thing the corporate worship gathering should not be is the sole act of our Christian experience. Max Lucado wrote that we sing Onward Christian Soldiers on Sunday, and then we go AWOL on Monday. Going to church on Sunday (or another day your community chooses to gather) isn’t the sum total of our Christian experience, but is simply a part of the whole. Neither should the other days that we do not gather be considered less holy or less Christian than the times we get together.
This means that the gathering together for corporate worship cannot be our only avenue of worship. Worship is any act of acknowledging and displaying God’s “worthship;” His worth to be worshipped. When we return to Him the resources He calls us to, that is worship. When we come to the Lord’s Table for the sacrament of communion, that is worship. When we set
our lives aside unto Him and for His service, that is worship. So, our worship to God extends beyond the meeting with one another.
Lastly (at least in this letter), our meeting together in some type of regularity for offering worship to the Lord should not be a substitute for an integrated church life. As a matter of fact, a vibrant integrated church life with family member is the body of Christ will enhance and enrich our time together corporately. In The Book of Acts chapter 2, we see the early being of one mind as they gather in the temple. But we do not see that being the end all be all of their life as a follower of Jesus Christ. They also broke bread from one house to another. They were in fact developing a community of family as they shared this Christian life with others in the church.
So, why do we gather and what are the expectations and intentions in following the Father’s directions?
For starters, because of instruction and tradition. Numerous Scriptures in the Old Testament echo God’s directions when He says,
Exodus 12:16 “On the first day you shall have a holy assembly.”
Deuteronomy 16:8 “…there shall be a solemn assembly to the LORD your God.”
We do some things because God has instructed us and tradition doesn’t have to be some empty exercise, but we can find life in them.
There is the matter of instructing and encouraging one another when we gather. The Psalmist says,
Psalms 22:22 “I will tell of Your name to my brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.”
And again,
Psalms 111:1 “Praise the LORD! I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart, In the company of the upright and in the assembly.”
And of course,
Hebrews 10:25 “not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another…”
In Exodus 25, we see God orchestrating a gathering of His people together with a few points to illuminate. It would do you well to read at least the first 22 verses of that chapter.
The Lord gives instruction for the people to make Him a sanctuary, because He desires to dwell among His people. “I will dwell with them” is God’s priority in these instructions. It is worship that develops the structure in which God dwells (Psalm 22:3).
He gives the order to call the people together and have them bring an offering before the Lord God.
Verse 3 – “Speak to the people of Israel, that they take for Me a contribution. From every man whose heart moves him you shall receive the contribution for Me.”
It is then that He calls for His people to build Him a house – a throne on which to sit. Of course, we are not building physical
structures today to provide God a place of residence, but we are building Him a house when we gather and offer up praise and worship to our King. So the summation of His instructions is that He desires to dwell with us; meet with us; and speak to us. This is given in the context of speaking to the people gathering in a corporate setting.
The dynamic of our relationship to God— that it is a corporate one, not just an individual one (1 Cor. 12)—necessitates a corporate expression and the corporate dialogue of revelation and response. We were not built to do this Christian walk alone, but rather in the family of God in a local expression of that family.
What we are dealing with today, according to Monte E. Wilson, is that
“for the modern evangelical, worship is defined exclusively in terms of the individual’s experience. Worship, then, is not about adoring God but about being nourished with religious feelings, so much so that the worshiper has become the object of worship.”
When we study the ancient approach to worship, however, we see that the church did not overly concern itself with feelings of
devotion, but rather with heartfelt and biblically informed obedience. Moreover believers had a firm grasp on the fact that when they gathered “as a church” (1 Cor. 11:18), their worship was to be a corporate expression. Church worship was not a gathering of individuals but of the body of Christ.
To carry that thought even further, Eugene Peterson in his book, “Leap Over the Wall,” wrote these words.
“Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God. Worship is the time and place that we assign for deliberate attentiveness to God – not because he’s confined to time and place but because our self-importance is so insidiously relentless that if we don’t deliberately interrupt ourselves regularly, we have no chance of attending to Him at all at other times and in other places.”
The value and importance of corporate worship cannot adequately be conveyed in this short letter, but I think we get the gist of the message…gathering together with fellow followers of Jesus Christ on some regular basis is not only directed by the Lord God, but we see that the healthiness of our Christian walk depends on it.
So, what can we say, in conclusion, regarding our gathering with other brothers and sisters for the purpose of corporate worship of our Lord God?
We are reminded that we are called upon to build God a house in which He can inhabit. According to Psalm 22:3 that house is the praises and worship of His people. It is in that place where we offer up to Him a house of praises that we have an encounter with our Maker, through the work of the Holy Spirit. This is because when we gather together for corporate worship, we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God. When we move beyond ourselves and our concerns and rest solely on that will glorify and please God, the quality of our life greatly improves.
We gather together to express corporately what we might have experienced individually in the past week (or whatever interval you gather.) We bring our praises and petitions into the His presence with our spiritual family surrounding us and while we are addressing as one the almighty God of the universe. We bring our successes and our failures together and offer them to the Father as a sacrifice unto Him. We then move on with our lives, having left all that at the foot of the cross.
While in the environment of worship and praise, it is there that we often receive revelation from the Lord. We have disengaged from our agendas and desires, and are sensitive to and open to what the Father wants us to see by the Spirit. We see what we had been unable to see before. “I was blind, but now I see.”
As mentioned earlier, the gathering together for corporate worship provides an opportunity for us to encourage and be encouraged. After all, that is main thrust of Hebrews 10: 25 (referenced above).
Another thing that happens when we enjoy the presence of God while in the midst of our spiritual family worshipping and praising Him is we become transformed through adoration of the King. We are no longer frustrating or blocking the work God desires in our hearts and we experience a little bit of the incarnation of Christ, as Romans teaches us that we are predestined “to be conformed to the image of his Son.”
The dynamic of being assembled with fellow travelers in the Christian way will foster unity among the body of Christ, because as we are gathered unto one purpose and worshipping one God, we find ourselves gaining a unity of purpose, even if our methods of arriving at that purpose vary.
And finally, gathering with other brothers and sisters in Christ for the purpose of worshipping God together will ultimately enlarge our vision and scope. When we are able to move beyond self-centeredness and move towards Jesus centeredness, we are able to see the plan of God as larger than our finite minds could conjure.
Let’s not forsake the gathering together in a corporate manner, however that plays out in your world. Isolation is the most used tool of the devil as he attempts to marginalize us and disqualify us from the race. Don’t be a casualty to his schemes and deceptive tactics. Gather with the ones whom God has joined you and
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth
will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace..”