Christians tend to go to church for five reasons.
- MUSIC. We love music, and the church has good music. It’s like going to a weekly rock concert! And if we never help fund the church, it’s free!
- TEACHING. We wanna learn about God, Christianity, and the bible. We want a good informative sermon. We want good informative bible studies. We wanna know more.
- SERVICE. We feel a great personal reward in ministering to the needy, and the church has some ways to do that, and encourages us in it.
- SACRAMENT. We gotta stay connected with God, and what helps are the rituals we can only do as a group. Like praising together, praying together, holy communion, and so forth.
- FELLOWSHIP. We wanna see our friends.
Churches tend to focus primarily on sacrament, sermon, or music. Today I’m gonna bring up the fellowship thing. It’s a way bigger deal than a lot of Christians realize.
Well, some of us already realize it’s a big deal. It’s why certain churches structure things so people can interact a lot. They have a lot of small groups, and promote ’em constantly. They have a “meet ’n greet time” in the middle of the service, which can go on for as many as ten minutes. (I used to take advantage of my church’s meet ’n greet time to go get another cup of coffee.) They have potlucks and pizza parties and movie nights and other social functions—sometimes monthly, sometimes weekly. And they refuse to create a church café, ’cause they know the way people tend to run ’em, it’ll ultimately discourage fellowship.
This fellowship activity isn’t for any ulterior motive. That’s the motive. They want the people of their church to make friends with one another. Jesus ordered us to love one another; Jn 15.12 they’re trying to make it happen. You’re not gonna love one another when you don’t know one another. You’re not gonna make friends with your fellow Christians when they’re nothing more than the other people who go to your church.
Yeah, there are fringe benefits to the people in your church making friends with one another: They’re gonna come to church to see their friends. Or, to put it shorter, they’re gonna come to church.
That’s what got me coming to church, back in my young-hypocrite years: My friends were there. I could do without the church services themselves: The music sucked. The sermons were shallow. (Coincidentally, I and my faith were also sucky and shallow, so more likely this was just me.) I would’ve had no problem with sleeping in Sunday mornings, like every other pagan. But I looked forward to sitting in the back of the church auditorium, quietly goofing off with my buds, whether it was Sunday morning or Thursday night youth group.
I grew out of the hypocrisy, but it’s still true: Lotta times I don’t feel like going to church. But if I have friends there, and I wanna see them, I go. If I find out my friends are gonna be absent—they gotta work, they’re on vacation, they’re out sick, and so forth—there goes my motivation to attend.
or they’re on vacation, or otherwise won’t attend—sometimes I’ll attend anyway, and sometimes I won’t. And I’m far from the only one.
In fact one church I went to, I had really spotty attendance because all my friends left. I used to have lots of friends at that church, including some of the pastors. Some left for work-related reasons, some for ministry-related reasons. Lots because they were college students and graduated. Some because they just decided they were done with that church. My final year there, before I moved away, I had no friends there. Just acquaintances. Nice people, but not friends. So some weeks, when I felt like going to Noah’s Bagels instead of church, that’s precisely what I did.
Later I moved, it was time to go church-shopping, so I visited one church—we’ll call it “Mars Hill.” Went to the morning services; went to the evening services; said hi to loads of people. One evening, about a month in, the head pastor finally said hi, and we chatted a bit. He was the only one who bothered to chat a bit. He was also, sad to say, going through a severe health crisis at the time, so he couldn’t make any other time for me. But none of Mars Hill’s other leaders bothered to fill in for him, and none of Mars Hill’s other people cared to venture outside their cliques. I really patiently hung around three months, but just didn’t make connections. So I didn’t stay.
The next church: Made friends immediately. Guess where I did stay.