Get­ting Peo­ple to Faith­fully
Come, Inte­grate, and Participate.

Why go to Church or Attend Church, Why Congregate.

by Mis­sion­ary David R. Cox

What most peo­ple do not under­stand is the impor­tance of stick­ing with the plan that God has devised for us, the local church. We can­not break with that plan to do some other plan of our own devis­ing with­out totally going off into sin (remov­ing God and His bless­ing from our work). God has a great genius that He uses to put design into His plans and com­mands that most nor­mal peo­ple can­not even begin to grasp. At this point, we need to explain the impor­tance of the local church. Please jump over to the fol­low­ing study and exam­ine it before going on.

Refusal of Accept­ing God’s Pat­tern of the Local Church as the Method of God.

Let’s be frank about this. You can­not do much of any­thing with peo­ple if they do not:

(1) Come to church.
(2) Par­tic­i­pate in the church.
(3) Sup­port the church (read this, to serve and give).

We go back to one of our fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of church plant­ing, the Pas­tor is the one in charge of fix­ing any­thing that goes wrong. So how? By preach­ing we change peo­ple. That is the only way that really works and works on a per­ma­nent life long basis. But if the audi­to­rium where the preacher preaches is empty, it is of lit­tle use to preach to empty pews. (While some­body is there, at least some­thing is hap­pen­ing in some people’s lives.)

So part of our job as church planters is to con­vince with logic and Scrip­ture the peo­ple we have con­tact with so that these bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples we carry will change their lives. We start with why a Chris­t­ian should congregate.

As the per­son who gov­erns or admin­is­trates the church, you must deal with what is wrong in the church and in the indi­vid­ual lives of your peo­ple and fix it bib­li­cally speak­ing. As a pas­tor you must know like the back of your hand the argu­ments for why peo­ple should come to church and par­tic­i­pate, and you should have your counter argu­ments down pat against why peo­ple don’t come (their excuses), and you should be con­stantly devel­op­ing more in this area as time goes on. We are try­ing to “sell” the con­cepts of God to our peo­ple. This is where we insert these con­cepts into our peo­ple through ser­mons, through indi­rect treat­ments in dif­fer­ent set­tings, and through items in the bul­letins, in the announce­ments, and in any chan­nel that we can get them across. At times the only way to do this is to go to a person’s house and sit down face to face and deal with them about these things. Although this is not “easy” by any means, many times it is a final last resort. They sim­ply won’t come under your influ­ence any other way, and this is how you must do it.

Every pas­tor should both know very well the argu­ments and his counter argu­ments in this area to deal with ver­bally in a one on one set­ting (coun­sel­ing), and he should have lit­er­a­ture pre­pared and ready for these kinds of sit­u­a­tions. Here in Mex­ico I have a ser­mon on why we should attend church as well as a small book so that I can give them away in a less offen­sive move than sit­ting down face to face (which I use as a last resort).

Note that this gath­er­ing of the sheep is one of the basic duties of a pas­tor, sheep gath­er­ing and con­vers­ing. cox-BiblicalPastorv2.pdf

Let’s start here by exam­in­ing first of all why peo­ple come to church, and why they don’t. They we will go to why peo­ple par­tic­i­pate and why they don’t.

A. Why peo­ple come to church

When we deal with church atten­dance as a per­son in charge of church over­sight, we need to under­stand that we are not pas­sive in this mat­ter. The prob­lems that drive peo­ple away from church and God in gen­eral are at our hands, and we cause these prob­lems, we can pre­vent them, we can fix them, we can avoid them, and we can make them go away, because that is the min­istry of oversight.

We start off by get­ting a good under­stand­ing why peo­ple come to church. There are right rea­sons and there are wrong rea­sons. On a super­fi­cial level, it does not mat­ter why your peo­ple have come to church, because with­out their pres­ence there, you can do very lit­tle for them short of mov­ing the teach­ing and exhort­ing min­istry of church out of church and into home Bible stud­ies. This is pos­si­ble, but it is not rec­om­mended nor our goal.

Issues-14 A Primer on Home Bible Studies

The Wrong Rea­sons for Com­ing to Church

Over the years I have heard a lot of things as a min­is­ter. These would be the rea­sons that I hear or dis­cern that peo­ple come to church which are mis­guided or improper. I am try­ing to put forth these ideas as clearly and boiled down as I can, and most of the time these rea­sons are “cleaner” or rephrased so that they do not sound so harsh, but nonethe­less it is the same issue.

(1) Because some­body makes me go to church.
(2) Because I want to find a Chris­t­ian mate.
(3) Because I want the eco­nomic ben­e­fits the church offers me.
(4) Because I want to be enter­tained.
(5) Because I want sta­tus, pres­tige, and power.
(6) Because I want to be saved.
(7) Because I want to be reli­gious.
(8) Because I want my husband/wife/children/parents to turn out right.
(9) Because I was brought up in church and its my cus­tom or habit.

(1) Because some­body makes me go to church — This rea­son is because some­one is forc­ing the per­son directly or indi­rectly against him will. After all is said and done, a per­son has to want to go to heaven and be saved. There are some peo­ple that after con­sid­er­ing what it will cost them, they pre­fer not to pay the price. Christ directed teach­ing towards mak­ing peo­ple come to grips with the high cost of fol­low­ing Christ, and that a per­son should con­sider this high cost and enter in full con­science of what it will cost him, pos­si­bly every­thing includ­ing his fam­ily, his wel­fare, and even his life.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts

a. Deny your­self, take up your cross and fol­low Christ — Mat. 16:24; Mat 26:35; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; 2 Tim 2:12; Titus 1:16.

b. Gain the world but lose your own soul — Mat 10:39; Mat. 16:25–26; Mark 8:36; Luke 9:24–25; John 12:25; 2 John 1:8.

(2) Because I want to find a Chris­t­ian mate (or I want to find some­body, any­body will do, and the qual­ity is bet­ter in a church Col­lege and Career than a bar) — Although this is a valid ele­ment of our church com­mu­nity, it should not be the pri­or­ity in the life of a sin­gle Chris­t­ian, and even less should it be the basis for decid­ing where or how often a per­son attends church. The per­son con­trolled by this worry typ­i­cally goes church hop­ping to check out the avail­able sin­gles in all the churches in their area.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. Wait on the Lord — Ps. 27:14; 37:4, 7,9,34; 130:5;

b. Deal with sin­gle­ness as a gift and min­istry — 1 Corinthi­ans 7. First under­stand that God’s plan or norm is nor­mally that every man and woman marry one time and set­tle down with that per­son until death do they part. All of the sex­ual, social, and spir­i­tual needs that a per­son needs in com­pan­ion­ship should be ful­filled in that rela­tion­ship with their spouse. But God gives dif­fer­ent gifts to dif­fer­ent peo­ple at times (7:7), and there is a great spir­i­tual ben­e­fit in sin­gle­ness. Those that God wants to stay sin­gle is for undis­tracted min­istry in God’s vine­yard (7:25–35). Even so if a per­son is ded­i­cated to min­istry and serv­ing God with sin­gle­ness of heart (and sin­gle­ness in their social life), if they meet some­body, it is not sin to marry (7:36–38).

c. God waits on you to pre­pare your­self socially and spir­i­tu­ally — God’s tim­ing some­times depends on you not being socially or spir­i­tu­ally pre­pared. Here read this because of our imma­tu­rity, God keeps our mate from cross­ing our path. Spir­i­tu­ally many peo­ple are like­wise not ready to han­dle the respon­si­bil­i­ties of mar­ried life, and the sur­prise that a child brings into it.

(3) Because I want the eco­nomic ben­e­fits the church offers me — This is the typ­i­cal rice Chris­t­ian approach to church growth. Many churches take the posi­tion that as long as they are in the door, for what­ever rea­son they came we don’t care, we just want to count heads. As such they typ­i­cally offer eco­nomic ben­e­fits in com­ing to their church. If they are chil­dren, then it is candy, toys, and other such things. If they are adults, then it is kitchen pantry items, or some other eco­nomic benefit.

Here we need to under­stand that very sim­ply, peo­ple come with one or the other men­tal atti­tudes. Some come to get eco­nomic ben­e­fit, and they never put in the offer­ing plate any­thing near what they take home eco­nom­i­cally. Those who come with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of eco­nomic ben­e­fit usu­ally sup­port the work of God.

Here we also need to under­stand that this type of church is flawed in its con­cept of the min­istry, because the pas­tor at the head of this seeks power, influ­ence, fame, and per­sonal eco­nomic ben­e­fits. By using this tac­tic he pro­motes his own church to good Chris­tians so they will give to sup­port his ego trip. Accord­ing to var­i­ous pas­sages such 1 Tim­o­thy 3:3; Titus 1:7; 1 Peter 5:2, such a min­is­ter is dis­qual­i­fied from the min­istry in any aspect.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. Chris­tians have to renounce riches and the retain­ing of riches to be truly saved.

Luke 14:33; Mat. 6:19–21. Early Chris­tians lost their pos­ses­sions with­out it both­er­ing them because they sought a heav­enly coun­try and home Acts 8:2; Heb 10:34.

b. The value of a person’s life is not in the pos­ses­sions he owns.

Luke 12:15, Mat. 6:21

c. Cov­etous­ness is a great sin before God.

1 Cor 6:10; Eph 5:3,5; It is idol­a­try Col. 3:5. Those who do this have erred from the Chris­t­ian faith 1 Tim 6:10. Christ warned to avoid all types of lust, cov­etous­ness, and greed Luke 12:15. We need to be in con­stant vig­i­lance against greed and cov­etous­ness in our lives Mat 23:25; Mark 7:21–23; Luke 12:15. We should flee the desire to enrich (make wealthy) 1 Tim 6:10–11; Heb 13:5. Chris­tians should sep­a­rate them­selves from those who are greedy Eph 5:7. The decep­tion of riches chokes out the true word of God in a person’s heart Mat 13:22.

d. Rich peo­ple hardly enter heaven.

Lazarus and the rich man “you have received the good things in your life” Luke 16:19–25. Luke 6:24. Peo­ple either serve riches or God, but not both, so few get to heaven Mat 6:24; 19:21–24.

e. Chris­tians should seek medi­oc­rity, nei­ther rich nor poor.

Proverbs 30:7–9.

(4) Because I want to be enter­tained — Some peo­ple today want to go to church to be enter­tained. Really what they want is a bar with its show, but don’t want to pay the price of admis­sion. Some­how they think by involv­ing it with reli­gion it makes it right. These types churches usu­ally cater to peo­ple who are very lit­tle inter­ested in reli­gious trans­for­ma­tion, and are more inter­ested in see­ing, hear­ing, and experiencing.

Their ser­vices take the form of orches­trated shows. The hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars on elec­tron­ics to fully this is obvi­ously a tip off. Who gets the glory, man or God? God orga­nized the church such that the main force in it for spir­i­tual change is the explain­ing of the Word of God. Does this kind of ser­vice ful­fill this require­ment? What is the spir­i­tual change after hear­ing a mov­ing (read rock and roll tune placed over a hymn)? Do the peo­ple med­i­tate on the words and the mes­sage? Most of the time it is hard to even under­stand the words of these kinds of songs. The glory of the artists who per­form them is also in ques­tion. God wants purity, so those who min­is­ter should be pure. Can God really effec­tively use a spir­i­tu­ally dirty min­is­ter? With the show men­tal­ity it doesn’t mat­ter. With a church ser­vice that com­mu­ni­cates spir­i­tu­ally to the soul (chal­lenges the soul to bet­ter itself by obey­ing God’s word), it is very impor­tant. Who will lis­ten to a child-abuser preacher who tells us how to order our fam­i­lies or love rela­tion­ships with our spouse and chil­dren? Nobody. Because he is unqual­i­fied to spir­i­tu­ally min­is­ter. Yet the list of sins among Chris­t­ian pop­u­lar artists is long. None are exem­plary in their lives. They are lust­ful for money, they are proud, they are vain.

You by fol­low­ing that type of church fall into the same sins as those in front of you each week.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

(5) Because I want sta­tus, pres­tige, and power. -

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

(6) Because I want to be saved — This is the desire or state­ment of a per­son who is not saved. Basi­cally any­body who equates hav­ing to attend church in order to be saved, is believ­ing in a work instead of faith to be saved.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. We are saved by faith, not works. Eph­esians 2:9–10; Titus 3:5.

(7) Because I want to reli­gious — This is also the state­ment of some­body who is not really saved. The human mind and soul under­stands that there is a moral or reli­gious side to life. Nobody can stand or accept when some­body else steals from them, hurts them, or in other ways does things against them. But with­out a moral struc­ture, there is no rea­son why it is wrong. So morals have to enter into the pic­ture in order for us to pre­serve our rights, free­doms, and lib­er­ties (and possessions).

But many peo­ple want moral­ity, but they don’t want sal­va­tion. They have con­sid­ered it, and they have deemed that what God has offered comes at a price to high for them. There­fore they fab­ri­cate their own reli­gion to ful­fill this basic human desire or need, but they cre­ate some­thing that avoids their favorite hot points. Often we see belief sys­tems that avoid con­cepts of hell, grace and mercy (they are not who con­trols sal­va­tion but God), and con­cepts of deep sac­ri­fice, even to death.

The key to deal­ing with these peo­ple is to get them to see their con­cepts are in error, and that true sal­va­tion is only in Christ. God presents us Jesus, bro­ken and hang­ing on a cross (speak­ing of his deep sac­ri­fice), of eter­nal pun­ish­ment that won’t go away because we don’t like it, and sal­va­tion by grace through faith that means you must under­stand and come to God and sal­va­tion on God’s terms and con­di­tions not on your own fab­ri­ca­tions. You can­not judge God, God judges you.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

(8) Because I want my husband/wife/children/parents to turn out right -

This is often seen in peo­ple who show up occa­sion­ally to get a “dose” of reli­gion for their loved ones. Nor­mally this goes hand in hand with fam­ily prob­lems. When the kids are rebel­lious, the par­ents decide it is time to take them to church. When they think they have exposed them to suf­fi­cient “reli­gion” (see above) then they again fall away from church attendance.

Here the point is to deal with these fam­ily prob­lems sep­a­rate from the rest, then deal with the lack of com­mit­ment in these key peo­ple (the ones doing the bring­ing), and finally to ver­ify that they are truly saved.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

(9) Because I was brought up in church, and its my custom/habit — Although church atten­dance should be the cus­tom or habit of every true Chris­t­ian, this should not be the rea­son why you go to church. You should go for other rea­sons, but it should be a part of your Chris­t­ian life.

Peo­ple who have this prin­ci­ple rea­son for going to church receive bless­ings any­way, but often they are very vul­ner­a­ble to being offended, to being scared off by prob­lems, or they don’t par­tic­i­pate or inter­act with the church and the brethren because they have a faulty foun­da­tion here.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

The Right Rea­sons for Com­ing to Church

(1) Because it is an evi­dence of true sal­va­tion.
(2) God com­mands me to go to church, and it should be my cus­tom.
(3) It was the exam­ple left to us by the NT church and first cen­tury Chris­tians.
(4) Church pro­vides me with oppor­tu­nity to iden­tify with Christ as my Sav­ior.
(5) Church pro­vides me with oppor­tu­nity to serve God by serv­ing my broth­ers in Christ.
(6) Church pro­vides me with the con­text to ben­e­fit from spir­i­tu­ally gifted min­is­ters.
(7) Church pro­vides me with the avenue to prop­erly wor­ship God.
(8) To com­ply with other com­mand­ments in my Chris­t­ian life, I must do so in the con­text of church.
(9) Church facil­i­tates the growth of my faith, the holi­ness of my life, and purity of my doctrine.

(1) Because it is an evi­dence of true salvation.

This point is our strongest point that we must bela­bor with our peo­ple reg­u­larly (always new peo­ple who come in and every­body has to have this grilled into them). Very sim­ply the rela­tion­ship we have with the peo­ple of God is a reflec­tion of our sav­ing rela­tion­ship with God.

1 John 2:9 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in dark­ness even until now.

“hate” — [3404 miseo] — Mean­ing: 1) to hate, pur­sue with hatred, detest 2) to be hated, detested  BDAG — “depend­ing on the con­text, this verb ranges in mean­ing from ‘dis­fa­vor’ to ’detest’  The Eng­lish term ‘hate’ gen­er­ally sug­gests affec­tive con­no­ta­tions that do not always do jus­tice espe­cially to some Semitic shame-honor ori­ented use… in the sense of ‘hold in dis­fa­vor, be dis­in­clined to, have rel­a­tively lit­tle regard for.’” The point is that miseo can mean to want to do harm to, to detest, but it can also be a much less intense form, such as BDAG’s sec­ond mean­ing, (2) to be dis­in­clined to, dis­fa­vor, dis­re­gard. Thayer’s has this sec­ond mean­ing as “to love less, to post­pone in love or esteem, to slight… feel and express noth­ing more than inter­est in, or dis­re­gard and indifference.”

1 John 3:6–11 Whoso­ever abideth in him sin­neth not: whoso­ever sin­neth hath not seen him, nei­ther known him. 7 Lit­tle chil­dren, let no man deceive you: he that doeth right­eous­ness is right­eous, even as he is right­eous. 8 He that com­mit­teth sin is of the devil; for the devil sin­neth from the begin­ning. For this pur­pose the Son of God was man­i­fested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. 9 Whoso­ever is born of God doth not com­mit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he can­not sin, because he is born of God. 10 In this the chil­dren of God are man­i­fest, and the chil­dren of the devil: whoso­ever doeth not right­eous­ness is not of God, nei­ther he that loveth not his brother. 11 For this is the mes­sage that ye heard from the begin­ning, that we should love one another.

1 John 5:18 We know that whoso­ever is born of God sin­neth not; but he that is begot­ten of God keep­eth him­self, and that wicked one toucheth him not.

God places two clear signs of sal­va­tion before so that we may “try the spir­its” 1 John 4:1–2, and dis­cern what is of God and what is not. These signs of sal­va­tion are:

(1) to keep the com­mand­ments of God. (and they are not griev­ous to us 1 John 5:3).
(2) to love the brethren.

You can­not truly be saved and hate or sleight or put lit­tle or no inter­est and atten­tion in Christ and His body.

1 John 3:14–19 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. 15 Whoso­ever hateth his brother is a mur­derer: and ye know that no mur­derer hath eter­nal life abid­ing in him. 16 Hereby per­ceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shut­teth up his bow­els of com­pas­sion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? 18 My lit­tle chil­dren, let us not love in word, nei­ther in tongue; but in deed and in truth. 19 And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.

Sim­ply put, any­body who hates his brother (here stronger use of “hate”) is a mur­derer and no mur­derer is a truly saved per­son, he does not have eter­nal life abid­ing in him. Sac­ri­fice like Jesus did for us demand­ing a response if it is accepted. The only accept­able response is sac­ri­fice in kind. Here we enter into some clarifications.

(1) Who is my brother? — Very sim­ply every­body who is truly saved. This is why John entered into defin­ing who is saved in the first part of this epis­tle. Those who we are to under­stand as being saved (our broth­ers) with which we have an oblig­a­tion to relate are those who (a.) have fel­low­ship with God 1 Jn 1, and that fel­low­ship must be seen in their lives. (b.) They must man­i­fest the light of God and not dark­ness. (c.) The true Chris­t­ian is a per­son who does not sin. 1:8–10 says all sin, but here the idea is not a one time occur­rence but rather an habit­ual prac­tic­ing of sin. There is a firm and solid com­mit­ment on all Chris­tians to “keep the word of God”, i.e. obey (2:2–5). (d.) The truly saved is marked by walk­ing as Christ walked (2:6, 18; 1:6–7; Mat 11:29; John 13:15).

If this is true, then the con­text of see­ing the lifestyle of our brethren must be lim­ited to a lim­ited and local con­text. Our brethren (those with whom we have oblig­a­tion) are those who are local and vis­i­ble, not on the other side of the world. It is not nec­es­sar­ily wrong to send help to some dis­tant church, but the force of our spir­i­tual oblig­a­tion is to a local con­text, those whom we “live with” and “fel­low­ship with” in a local context.

(2) What is love? — Love appar­ently is to see to the con­di­tions of another, and make them bet­ter or the best that they can be. 1 John 3:17 inter­jects a phys­i­cal needs ele­ment in this rela­tion­ship. The per­son claim­ing to be saved and rejects sac­ri­fic­ing of his goods and money when a brother is in need, sim­ply is deny­ing the love of Christ, and this is a tes­ti­mony against his sal­va­tion not for it.

Matthew 25:31–46 Para­ble of the help­ful — Jesus put forth a para­ble to make a point, who really is the saved? As a shep­herd sep­a­rat­ing his own sheep from the goats that join in his flock, God will one day sep­a­rate the unsaved from the truly saved. Here the cri­te­ria is the point of this para­ble, what is the ele­ment that dis­tin­guishes a true sheep of Jesus Christ from a goat of Satan.

Love for Christ as demon­strated through ser­vice to the Body of Christ — These saved peo­ple didn’t fully com­pre­hend that their ser­vice to their brethren was actu­ally to Christ Him­self. Thirst, hun­gry, cloth­ing, see­ing to needs when sick or in jail.

Matthew 25:40 Ver­ily I say unto you, Inas­much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Hatred for Christ as demon­strated for lack of inter­est in the Body of Christ — Here the point is not that these peo­ple per­se­cuted the body of Christ, sim­ply that they had no time nor inter­est for “those types of things”.

Matthew 25:45–46 hen shall he answer them, say­ing, Ver­ily I say unto you, Inas­much as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into ever­last­ing pun­ish­ment: but the right­eous into life eternal.

Clearly these are unsaved peo­ple who thought they were going to heaven got a nasty sur­prise. The cri­te­ria for dis­cern­ment is sim­ply in a person’s rela­tion­ship with the body of Christ.

Matthew 7:20–23 Where­fore by their fruits ye shall know them. 21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king­dom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not proph­e­sied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out dev­ils? and in thy name done many won­der­ful works? 23 And then will I pro­fess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Here we need to insert this pas­sage above. A true Chris­t­ian is known by his fruits. Even some peo­ple will boast in the judg­ment that they have “proph­e­sied” or preached, they have done many great and won­der­ful works like cast­ing out dev­ils, and God will say he never knew them. Their works are iniq­uity. The key is know­ing God’s will by seek­ing God’s will, and then by doing God’s will.

(3) What is hate? — We have already seen that hatred is really not nec­es­sary the destroy­ing of another (although it can be), but it is also the dis­in­ter­est, the lack of pri­or­ity, the lack of show of inter­est in some­thing. This is what hap­pens when a Chris­t­ian takes a plan of attend­ing church once a month or every other week some­thing like that. It is dis­in­ter­est. This is the same plan that a sup­posed Chris­t­ian takes when he comes in late to the ser­vices, leaves early (no fel­low­ship with the brethren), or when he refuses to open up in this fel­low­ship to par­tic­i­pate in what is going on in the local church.

You are only saved by lov­ing Christ. To love Christ means to embrace Him, and all that that sig­ni­fies. This love of Christ also includes lov­ing those redeemed by Christ.

1 John  5:1 Whoso­ever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begot­ten of him.

Sim­ply put, you can­not man­i­fest this love with the fol­low­ing things:

(1) Ded­i­cate time to being phys­i­cally with these brethren.
(2) Ded­i­cate energy and inter­est to know them per­son­ally.
(3) Ded­i­cate resources to help them (time in prayer, time in aid­ing them, etc).
(4) Sac­ri­fice of your eco­nomic resources to help them (dona­tions, etc).

The local church is a group of redeemed peo­ple in your area which have decided to orga­nize them­selves so as to com­ply with the will of God, and to move for­ward the word of God as best they can. If that is truly their pur­pose and char­ac­ter, you must unite with them and sup­port them both with inter­est, energy, and resources. To do oth­er­wise is to sleight Christ, and sleight your Sav­ior and your sal­va­tion. These pas­sages present us with the pic­ture that such a per­son who sleights Christ and His body is sim­ply not saved.

(2) God com­mands me to go to church, and it should be my cus­tom (habit).

Psalm 50:5 Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.

Noth­ing is as direct or stronger than a direct com­mand. Here we go to Hebrews 10:25.

Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the pro­fes­sion of our faith with­out waver­ing; (for he is faith­ful that promised;) 24 And let us con­sider one another to pro­voke unto love and to good works: 25 Not for­sak­ing the assem­bling of our­selves together, as the man­ner of some is; but exhort­ing one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

The con­text of this com­mand is that Hebrews is writ­ten for Jews who were under the OT sys­tem. The point of the pre­vi­ous verses is that the author is con­vinc­ing the Jews that the OT sys­tem is set aside for the new sys­tem (churches instead of the OT Tem­ple). A false con­clu­sion would be that our inde­pen­dence from the OT sys­tem would mean we do not need to con­gre­gate. Noth­ing would be fur­ther from the truth.

God has planned our sal­va­tion to be worked out in a con­text of a local group of redeemed, called a local church or a “church.”

Notice in Hebrews 10:24–25 that church atten­dance is wedged between pro­vok­ing one another to good works and exhort­ing one another. This is a local church context.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. God Treats Harshly Will­ful Bel­liger­ence on our part

Luke 12:47 And that ser­vant, which knew his lord’s will, and pre­pared not him­self, nei­ther did accord­ing to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

1 John 2:17 And the world pas­seth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

Here your best approach is to show the indi­vid­ual that sal­va­tion has as its foun­da­tion obe­di­ence to the will of God. That is what saves you, doing what God wants, and in the case of sal­va­tion it means being in Jesus as the Redeemer of your soul from your sins. If this is the foun­da­tion or a con­di­tion upon which we enter sal­va­tion, then it absolutely has to be an ele­ment of every true Christian’s life. He who believes he is a Chris­t­ian but does not have that ten­der and live rela­tion­ship with the will of God is only deceiv­ing him­self on the issue of sal­va­tion in the first place.

Other verses are the bro­ken­ness of Christ as our exam­ple (body bro­ken on the cross and in the Lord’s Sup­per), meek­ness and humil­ity as our prin­ci­ple Chris­t­ian nature, the active seek­ing of God the Father’s will as Christ showed us so we can imi­tate (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38; Mat 26:39), and verses using the keep­ing of God’s com­mand­ments as almost a con­di­tion of sal­va­tion (1 John 2:4–5; 3:24; 5:3; John 14:15, 21,23; 15:10; Mat. 11:30).

Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thes­sa­lonica, in that they received the word with all readi­ness of mind, and searched the scrip­tures daily, whether those things were so.

b. The Idea of church or congregating

The terms used for church or con­gre­ga­tion (ekkle­sia in the NT) means called out for a pur­pose. The point is that it was used to call the peo­ple out of their homes and nor­mal busi­ness to gather for a spe­cial pur­pose, like a town meet­ing to deal with a group issue. This is what God wants us as Chris­tians to do every Sun­day and Wednes­day night.

c. Cus­tom, man­ner or Habit in Con­gre­gat­ing Hebrews 10:25

The idea behind con­gre­gat­ing with the peo­ple of God for the pur­poses of God is that it be an estab­lished reg­u­lar part of our lives. A habit is some­thing that we always usu­ally do. On any given Sun­day dur­ing the year, you should be in church. If you are not in church then it is because of an emer­gency or some non-normal event in your life, sick­ness, vaca­tion (even here you should be in a church wher­ever you are vaca­tion­ing), busi­ness travel, etcetera.

(2) It was the exam­ple left to us by the NT church and first cen­tury Christians.

Luke 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his cus­tom was, he went into the syn­a­gogue on the sab­bath day, and stood up for to read.

We see that the New Tes­ta­ment church and Chris­tians have left us an exam­ple for us to fol­low. With­out argu­ment, the New Tes­ta­ment believ­ers had the estab­lish­ment (by God) of local churches. These local churches were gath­er­ing points where the peo­ple of God got together to do the work of God and ful­fill the pur­poses of God on the day God appointed (God changed it from Sat­ur­day to Sun­day in honor of the resurrection).

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. Jesus cus­tom was to be in with the peo­ple of God on the day God estab­lished for the pur­poses God estab­lished (Scrip­ture read­ing and explain­ing Neh 8:8).

Luke 4:16.

b. New Tes­ta­ment Church example.

John 20:1, 26; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2

c. What did they do when they got together? Typ­i­cal local church ser­vice stuff. Acts 2:46–47 fel­low­ship and prais­ing God, 1 Cor 14:26 Psalms, hymns, and spir­i­tual songs, doc­tri­nal teach­ing, edi­fy­ing things; 1 Cor 11:27 Lord’s Sup­per. The most cen­tral activ­ity is the pub­lic read­ing and explain­ing of Scrip­tures Luke 24:27, 32, 45; Act 17:2–3.

d. We should not let pass by either, that the Old Tes­ta­ment exam­ple is the same. Psalm 23:6; 27:4; 65:4; 84:4; 134:1–2.

(3) Church pro­vides me with oppor­tu­nity to iden­tify with Christ as my Savior.

Our sal­va­tion depends on our faith, and the strength of our faith is extremely impor­tant there­fore. That pro­fess­ing of Christ is pre­cious and extremely dear to the true Chris­t­ian. God has designed sal­va­tion such that it is nec­es­sary for us to inter­act in order to truly be saved.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. Romans 10:10–11, Matthew 10:32–33 Impor­tance of Con­fess­ing Christ

Romans 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto right­eous­ness; and with the mouth con­fes­sion is made unto sal­va­tion. 11 For the scrip­ture saith, Whoso­ever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

Con­fes­sion is a nec­es­sary out­work­ing of our faith, because he who refuses to con­fess Christ is plainly not saved (Matthew 10:32–33). Here (verse 11) he who is ashamed of Christ is not saved.

Matthew 10:32 Whoso­ever there­fore shall con­fess me before men, him will I con­fess also before my Father which is in heaven. 33 But whoso­ever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

The bot­tom line here is that any­body that claims to be a Chris­t­ian but refuses to pub­licly con­fess Christ is sim­ply not yet saved. Take great cau­tion that you do not leave the impres­sion that some kind of con­fes­sion (as a work) is nec­es­sary for sal­va­tion, but rather the real­ity of sal­va­tion depends on the bold­ness and lack of shame one has towards his faith in Christ.

Use­ful Expla­na­tion: Here I use the illus­tra­tion of two young sin­gle peo­ple. If a young man asks a girl to marry him, but they do it in the pri­vacy of his room with nobody else present, and then he says to her that they will never tell any­body that they are mar­ried, they will never get a mar­riage cer­tifi­cate, and they will not live together, both will con­tinue to live with each’s par­ents like they did grow­ing up, what girl in her right mind will accept this kind of thing? All girls want the same thing here, a ring (shows com­mit­ment), a wed­ding where both fam­i­lies and friends come (shows lack of shame and pub­lic accep­tance of the girl as his wife), and in gen­eral a con­stant accep­tance by the guy that he is really mar­ried, and mar­ried to her.

God is no dif­fer­ent. God wants us to pub­licly con­fess Christ. Here the begin­ning is in our water bap­tism, then our rela­tion­ship with God is seen in our rela­tion­ship with a local church where there are true redeemed, and then a gen­eral any­where every­where pub­lic recog­ni­tion that Christ is your hope of going to heaven, you are a lit­tle Christ, or Christian.

b. We should not have shame towards our faith in Christ.

God is very spe­cific about the absolute need of not being ashamed of Christ if you pro­pose that you have sav­ing faith. See No Shame in Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26; Romans 9:33; 10:11; Phil 1:20; 1 Pet 2:6; 1John 2:28. See No Deny­ing in Mat. 10:33; Luke 12:9; Rom. 1:16; 2 Tim 1:8; 2:12.

c. We are saved by God to give wit­ness to the Savior.

Mat. 5:16 — God com­mands us to let our light shine.

1 Peter 2:9 — God has ordained us as a peo­ple to show forth the praises of he who calls peo­ple from dark­ness to light.

(4) Church pro­vides me with oppor­tu­nity to serve God by serv­ing my broth­ers in Christ.

God’s design for every Chris­t­ian is that he live out his spir­i­tual life in the con­text of a local church, relat­ing to the other redeemed in that local church as well as the spir­i­tual lead­er­ship in that local church. This is main bur­den we have in this issue of atten­dance and par­tic­i­pa­tion. If we lose the bat­tle here, we have lost everything.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. Broth­erly love with the redeemed is a prin­ci­ple part of God’s com­mand­ment to us.

First is that the true Chris­t­ian must love his brother, and sec­ondly this love must take the form of ser­vice. He who does not love and does not meet the needs of his Chris­t­ian brethren by means of per­sonal ser­vice, well, they can­not enjoy sal­va­tion it would appear.

Here we need to explain some things. First of all, Titus 3:5 and Eph­esians 2:8–9 again clearly lay down the prin­ci­ple that we are not saved by works but by faith. But true sav­ing faith is a “fruit­ful” belief, that is, a belief that pro­duces fruit or evi­dence in a person’s life. No evi­dence, no real faith (see James 2:17–24).

Okay, so real faith is to love God for the sal­va­tion He has given us, and this love is intan­gi­ble, because God is not phys­i­cally here in a body that we can show Him our love. So God has replaced his phys­i­cal body with the body of Christ, the redeemed. We show our love for God by what we do to our brethren.

Read Matthew 25:31–46.

Let’s note a few things here. First note that God sees how we treat our brethren in Christ as how we would treat God if he was here again in a phys­i­cal body. Not treat­ing God with respect gets one thrown in hell pretty quick. That point is lost in our day of dis­re­spect being trendy.

Next let’s note that it is not how we treat every­body else, but how we treat our brethren in Christ. This does not extend to the unsaved but to the saved, and this we under­stand in the con­text of a local church.

Next let’s note that those who are dis­fa­vored here are not out of God’s will, or good Chris­tians that God is dis­pleased with, but the rough­est word­ing pos­si­ble is used. They are going directly to hell!

Matthew 25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Ver­ily I say unto you, Inas­much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Matthew 25:45 Then shall he answer them, say­ing, Ver­ily I say unto you, Inas­much as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

Both the pos­i­tive and the neg­a­tive are noted. Those who are truly saved do serve their brethren in Christ, and those who do not serve their brethren in Christ can­not pos­si­bly be saved for God con­demns them to hell. Here we go much beyond church atten­dance to church par­tic­i­pa­tion and active Chris­t­ian ser­vice of every mem­ber towards their brethren in Christ.

1 John 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

Now we go to 1 John and note that to be saved by God is to declare and com­ply with one’s inten­tions to be like God. How­ever God is, that is how we should model our lives. God is love, and love demands rela­tion­ship with some­body else in order to truly man­i­fest itself in its purest form. There­fore a com­mu­nity is absolute necessary.

Chap­ter 3 of 1st John reveals to us how to dis­cern who is our brother. Basi­cally our Chris­t­ian brother is some­body who con­fesses pub­licly Christ and does not sin. Sin is ever present with us, even among good Chris­tians, but the idea is that Chris­tians renounce sin, and when they do sin, it is a shame and they are uneasy and stressed by it, and they repent and aban­don it.

But note some­thing else here.

1 John 3:11 For this is the mes­sage that ye heard from the begin­ning, that we should love one another.14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.16 Hereby per­ceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shut­teth up his bow­els of com­pas­sion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

What we have here then is a clear expla­na­tion of what should be hap­pen­ing in every true believer’s life. He has a rela­tion­ship with the body of Christ, other Chris­tians, and here we insert other Chris­tians in the con­text of a local church. The New Tes­ta­ment clearly presents that Chris­tians had rela­tion­ships with each other in local churches, and we see noth­ing that clearly presents any par­al­lel to the church. Only the local church exists in the New Tes­ta­ment. Every­thing rotates around it. There are no Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tions or groups out­side of the local church.

So a Chris­t­ian that does not love his brethren, is not really a Chris­t­ian. Can you love some­body that you neglect, that you do not seek out, that you do not serve and care for? Matthew 25 says no.

The rela­tion­ship of the believer with other believ­ers is absolutely essen­tial in his Chris­t­ian life and for him to val­i­date his sal­va­tion. The idea here is that he val­i­dates his true love for God through how he relates with his brethren in Christ. If this is a valid con­clu­sion from this pas­sage (and I assert it is), then what does it reveal about the real­ity of the love of a pro­fess­ing Chris­t­ian that aban­dons the church and never par­tic­i­pates, and attends almost noth­ing at all? His love for God is fake.

b. Our atti­tude should be happy and glad at the thought of church, not some­thing else.

Psalm 122:1

c. God doesn’t want us to serve and wor­ship God in out­ward hypocrisy, but in inward truth.

John 4:23; Matthew 15:7.

Get­ting this con­cept through to our church peo­ple is absolutely nec­es­sary for their spir­i­tual growth and spir­i­tual welfare.

(5) Church pro­vides me with the con­text to ben­e­fit from spir­i­tu­ally gifted ministers.

Very sim­ply put, God has given us a set of com­mand­ments and teach­ings that makes it quite impos­si­ble to com­ply with all of these with­out first deposit­ing the con­text of a local New Tes­ta­ment church. You sim­ply can­not com­ply cor­rectly with­out under­stand­ing that each and every Chris­t­ian is a mem­ber of a local church.

Eph­esians 4:11 And he gave some, apos­tles; and some, prophets; and some, evan­ge­lists; and some, pas­tors and teach­ers; 12 For the per­fect­ing of the saints, for the work of the min­istry, for the edi­fy­ing of the body of Christ:

For exam­ple, in this pas­sage God has given His church spir­i­tual gifts. Now the ques­tion is, where exactly did God intend for these gifted peo­ple to exer­cise their spir­i­tual gifts so that every­body can ben­e­fit? Isn’t it in the con­text of a local church?

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

(6) Church pro­vides me with the avenue to prop­erly wor­ship God.

Although we should be wor­ship­ful towards God always, no mat­ter wher­ever we might find our­selves, God’s desire is that we join with our co-redeemed in the place God has appointed, on the time God has appointed to do what God has appointed. In this time and place and sit­u­a­tion, we should wor­ship God in the pres­ence of our brethren.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. God deserves all our wor­ship and honor.

Rev. 4:11.

(7) To com­ply with other com­mand­ments in my Chris­t­ian life, I must do so in the con­text of church.

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

a. Verses that demand a com­mu­nity of the local church

James 5:14 — sick call the elders of the church.
Gala­tians 6:2 — bear­ing one another’s bur­dens before the Lord (espe­cially in prayer) this shows the great need of attend­ing mid-week prayer ser­vice
1 Thess 5:10 — encour­age one another with these words
1 Thess 5:10 — edify one another
1 Thess 5:12 — know (rec­og­nize and honor) those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord, and admon­ish you.
Acts 3:13 — exhort­ing one another.
1 Cor 16:14–16 - sub­mit your­selves to those who are addicted to the min­istry of the saints and works dili­gently, and are help­ing.
Hebrews 13:7 — remem­ber (rec­og­nize and hold in respect) them which have the rule (gov­ern­ing or lead­ing) over you… whose faith fol­low con­sid­er­ing the end of their con­duct.
Hebrews 13:17 — Obey them that have the rule over you and sub­mit your­selves (1 Tim 5:17)
1 Cor 9:14 — those who work of the gospel should live of the gospel (by your finan­cial support)

b. Verses touch­ing our spir­i­tual sac­ri­fices to God

God estab­lished (Exo­dus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:4,5, 9) that we redeemed in the New Tes­ta­ment dis­pen­sa­tion are all priests before God. Part of our priest­hood is to offer sac­ri­fices (with the require­ment of a holy life before we can do so cor­rectly) and to inter­cede before God on the behalf of others.

Holy life ded­i­cated to the Lord and His work — Romans 12:1–2; 2 Cor 8–15
Broth­erly love through goods works and mutual help — 1 Tim 6:18; Eph 2:10; 4:28; Gal 6:10; Titus 2:14; 3:1,8; Hebrews 6.10; 13:1,2,15; Romans 12:10,13.
Joy — Phil 2:17–18; Psalm 107:22; 132:9.
Thanks­giv­ing — 2 Cor 9:9–12
Praise — Hebrews 13:15; Psalms 50.14; 107:22; 116:17
Hymns and Spir­i­tual Songs -

(8) Church facil­i­tates the growth of my faith, the holi­ness of my life, and purity of my doctrine.

Let’s put this point as clearly as we can. The only thing that saves us is our faith in Jesus Christ. The qual­ity of our Chris­t­ian life (and life in gen­eral) after we are saved is depen­dent in only one thing, the same thing, our faith in Jesus Christ. So our faith is a most impor­tant thing for those of us who are really saved. What’s more our faith is of great con­cern to God.

Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the pro­fes­sion of our faith with­out waver­ing; (for he is faith­ful that promised;) 24 And let us con­sider one another to pro­voke unto love and to good works: 25 Not for­sak­ing the assem­bling of our­selves together, as the man­ner of some is; but exhort­ing one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

God wedges this great com­mand­ment con­cern­ing our con­gre­gat­ing in a pas­sage with other ele­ments. Verse 23 speaks of God’s exhor­ta­tion to us to hold fast or to shore up our faith. The way to do this (keep your faith, and make it grow stronger) is sim­ply by con­gre­gat­ing (not just attend­ing church, but attend­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing or inter­act­ing with other redeemed in church).

Notice that our activ­i­ties here are pro­vok­ing our Chris­t­ian brethren to love and good works. How? By us being an exam­ple in doing this. We are to exhort one another. How can we do this if we do not have time dur­ing each week in which we are with our Chris­t­ian brethren in a cer­tain place with this as its pur­pose? This is church!

Use­ful Preach­ing Texts and Tactics

Is Church Mem­ber­ship Necessary?

B. Why peo­ple don’t come to church

C. Why peo­ple par­tic­i­pate in church.

D. Why peo­ple don’t par­tic­i­pate in church

(in con­struc­tion)