Sunday can be a wonderful day. For most of us, it's the day of our primary weekly gathering with our church families. I'm already anticipating our fellowship tomorrow. I hope you are looking forward to yours, too.
Sunday can also be a dangerous day. It can be dangerous to both our church families and to us as individual Christians.
Sunday becomes dangerous when we place too much emphasis upon our gathering. The danger occurs when Sunday becomes "when we do church" or "when we are the church" to the exclusion of other days. I'm not talking about 100% on Sundays and 0% the remainder of the week. I don't know of any Christians who live like that. Rather, I'm talking about the trap of actually living as if Sunday dominates our church life. Things get out of kilter if, for example, Sunday composes 40% of church life, while the other days make up 60%.
I'm not necessarily referring to church gatherings. Rather, I'm talking about living out the Christian life. Jesus Christ never told us to take a day off and wait for Sunday to be spiritual. He never suggested that we reserve worship, edification, fellowship, and servanthood for Sundays.
I just used a calculator to divide 100% by seven (days in the week). The answer comes to about 14.3. This means that we should live about 14.3% of our church life each day of the week. That may seem a little silly, but what I'm trying to emphasize is the importance of being the church 24/7.
I'll be honest. I fall into this trap all the time. I'm excited because God has in the last year opened my eyes to new and wondrous things about His church. Many of these are lived out in the gathering. Since the primary gathering tends to be on Sunday, that day is obviously important. What I have to fight against is letting Sunday be too important.
I encourage you to think about how much emphasis you place on Sundays in your church life. You may already have a healthy balance. If you do, I hope you encourage other Christians to be more balanced. If you are out of balance (like I tend to be), I encourage you to labor against this.
So what can we out-of -balance folks do? I have a few ideas (in no particular order):
1. We can actively strive to contact and fellowship with our church family on the other days of the week. Coffee shops are excellent for this.
2. We can look for opportunities to share our faith during the week. Of course this should be an obvious one, but I don't know how much we really do it.
3. We can skip the Sunday gathering occasionally to remind ourselves that Sunday is not uber-important and that our church family can get along without us.
4. We can meet as a church family on a different day of the week (gasp!) once in a while.
5. We can pray for opportunities to be servants 24/7, and then follow the opportunities the Lord gives us.
I'll admit to being no expert on this issue. I struggle with it as much as any of you. So what do you think? Do you struggle with this? Do you have any other ideas about how to have an appropriate balance throughout the week?
My friend Alan has recently written on this same subject. Read his post here.
10 comments:
Eric,
Romans 14:5 says, "One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind."
Some may rightly feel that it's "all about Sunday". I'm not in that camp, but for them, if I understand the above passage correctly, that may be OK.
Peace,
Jeff
Jeff,
My question to anyone who thinks it's all about Sunday would be this, "How are you carrying out the one-anothers of scripture on the other days of the week?"
My guess is that few believe it's all about Sunday. However, in practice we can default to a Sunday-only mindset unless we work against it.
Amen! Great post.
Karen,
Thanks!
Eric,
Great article! I have sought for years to get this truth across: Sunday is just one day amongst seven in which we are to worship God, in EVERY aspect of our lives.
John,
You got it! If Christ is alive in us, then we should desire to live for Him each hour of each day.
Eric,
Like you, I don't think there's anything wrong with a group of believers (a church) deciding to get together on Sunday (or Saturday, or Friday, or Tuesday).
However, I would be concerned if a follower of Jesus Christ only spent time with other believers during that particular meeting. We need to spend time with one another often and regularly. Obviously, we will probably not see everyone throughout the week, and there are times when we need to be around people who are not believers. But, we need more time with one another than 1-2 (or even 3-4) hours per week.
Similarly, we must be careful not to make that "Sunday church meeting" (or whatever day) into an idol. Your suggestions are good. Let's spend time with other believers too, even believers who may have different beliefs than us. If we are brothers and sisters, then we should seek opportunities to get to know one another better and to serve God and others together.
-Alan
Alan,
I couldn't say it any better.
Heb. 3
"See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage / exhort one another DAILY, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.
Why are our hearts so hardened? Oh, yes there is still much hardness there, speaking for myself. We are so casual and infrequent in our mutual taking in and giving out of God's Word and His work in our lives. DAILY! This is hard work, but doable when filled with the Spirit, rather than ourselves. DAILY
Tim,
I agree. I think we too often get involved in so many time-consuming, busyness type activities that we fail to remember what we should doing. We must be intentional in being the church each day. I guess it requires work.
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