How solo can a person’s relationship with God be and still be faithful? – Meeting together, Preview

It’s been in the news, so I suspect many of you have heard the dire reports.  Christian worship service attendance across our nation is down.  Way down.  One report notes that in the past 30 years, 40 million people have stopped participating in the life and worship of their houses of worship.  That decline is sharper than the increases of the great revivals in our nation’s past, revivals like the First and Second Great Awakenings, and the arena evangelism era led by Billy Graham.

Surely not we evangelicals, though?  I mean, of course the Catholic church is seeing decline because of all the scandals in their midst.  And of course the mainline Protestant churches are falling apart because they “haven’t remained faithful to the Bible.”  But we evangelicals aren’t like that.  The decline can’t be affecting us evangelicals, right?  Look at all our megachurches.  Surely we’re doing okay, aren’t we?

No.

Of the 40 million people who have disconnected from church, 15 million are evangelicals.

Okay, so evangelicals have seen an exodus too, but is it really that big of a deal?  We can have a relationship with God anywhere, right?  We can listen to worship songs, we can watch TV preachers or Bible podcasts.

Yes, we can do all that.  Much of the content is very good.  But consider some questions:

How disconnected can our practice of Christianity be until we have crossed a line into unfaithfulness?  How individual can our practice of discipleship be?  Can a person’s relationship with God be solo?

How much do we need gather together?  Do we need to come to a particular address, where a congregation owns/rents property, and a bricks and mortar building with a worship space?  I believe these are vital questions for understanding faithful discipleship to Jesus.

Last week I started a blog series on relationships in the church, and this coming week that series continues as we take a look at what Scripture has to say about Christians meeting together. 

Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash