by Tom Wacaster
My travels in raising
funds, giving reports, and filling in preaching at various locations has
reminded me that our brethren continue to struggle with faithful
attendance. I have visited congregations where the drop in attendance
from Sunday morning to Sunday evening is shameful. A number of years ago
I visited a congregation in Texas where the Sunday morning attendance was more
than 80, and the evening attendance was only 15% of the morning figure.
Such was not due to sickness, or travels, or some kind of
emergency. That was, as one of the members noted, the regular practice;
or what the inspired writer referred to as the “custom.” On the other
hand, I have visited congregations where the difference between morning and
evening worship is only minimal, and that on a regular basis. But for the
most part, the average decline between AM and PM worship runs somewhere around
30% (give or take a percentage). The admonition that we
“consider one another to provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking our
own assembling together…but exhorting one another” largely goes unheeded by
many a weak saint.
While there are
certainly exceptions due to age, health, and perhaps travel obligations, those
who miss Sunday evening services do so because they “choose” to be
absent. The heart is the seat of all actions, and where the heart leads
the feet are swift to follow. Habitual absenteeism is a heart
problem. It is reflected in the neglect and apathy regarding the works of
the church, and is manifest in the neglect of the worship assembly.
In my commentary “Studies in Hebrews,” I included the following excellent
quotes from good brethren who have addressed this problem that plagues God's
people in every generation:
If we never determine
the day here covered, it will not lessen one degree the divine prohibition,
'not forsaking our own assembling together,' which unto this day is still a
custom of too many and a curse within the church. The fact that many do it with
clock-like regularity but adds weight to the Hebrew writer calling it a custom.
It is a public sin that needs a public confession with penitence to correct it.
This is as much a 'not' as those found in Romans 13:9. As we are not to commit
adultery, nor kill, nor steal, so we are not to forsake the assembling of
ourselves together....Far more than just the missing, it is the attitude one
must have toward the Master that led him to miss which crowns this act with
shame. We do not love the Lord, His Church, His Word, His worship, His service
and sacrifice as we should or we wouldn't miss! Some, in order to emphasize the
grace of God, tend to justify 'missing a few services' or 'missing now and
then,' or 'if missing one time would condemn us, then none of us will make it.'
The inherent danger here causes us to raise and answer some questions lest some
be deceived into thinking they can 'get away' with some known violations
(Dayton Keesee).
Perhaps there is nothing
so much needed in current America as a return to the old-fashioned virtue of
church attendance. Our beloved nation was founded by a generation of
church-goers; and, although the Puritans and the settlers at Jamestown have
been made to appear rather ridiculous in contemporary literature, being hailed
as dull, hypocritical, and intolerant; it is nevertheless true that such a
caricature is false. They were not dull or uninteresting. The
eloquent literature of those far-off days denies the current slanders against
that generation of spiritual giants who lived on the highest plane of religious
conviction, whose emotions ebbed and flowed with the tides of eternity, and whose
men of letters, such as Whittier, Hawthorne, and Longfellow, captured in their
writings the immortal loveliness of that people. Moreover, as the noted
radio preacher, Charles L. Goodell, said, 'Wherever there is a town meeting
house, a free school, a free church, or an open Bible, those forbears of ours
might lay their hands upon them and say, `All these are our children'.'
Our greatest institutions are the fruits of their church-going; and when any
generation shall forsake the house of prayer and worship, that generation is
dangerously near to losing those institutions inherited through the piety of
others. As for the cliché that 'mere church attendance' is without value,
we do not speak of 'mere' church attendance, but of wholehearted, sincere, devout,
and faithful public worship of Almighty God through Christ; and as for the
falsehood that people can worship God anywhere they are, it is refuted by the
fact that they don't! When people do not attend worship, they do not
give, nor pray, nor sing God's praise, nor observe the Lord's Supper, nor study
the sacred scriptures, all of which things are related to the public worship
and have practically no existence apart from it. Then let people heed the
commandment in this verse that they should not forsake the assembly of the
church; and the fact that some do, as was the case then, is no permission for
the faithful to follow an unfaithful example. Reasons why people forsake
the assembly are rationally explained, ardently advocated by them that wish to
defect, and established with all kinds of charges, excuses, allegations, and
insinuations against the church; but the only true reason for disobeying this
basic commandment is simply unbelief, or the carelessness and sin which lead to
unbelief (Coffman, page 235).
The various reasons that
men offer for missing the services are ludicrous to say the least. When
business, recreation, personal desires, unexpected company, bad weather, et al,
are offered to others as a "legitimate" excuse for absenting one from
worship to God, it sends forth the message (whether intended or not) that these
things are more important than one's devotion and worship to God.
There is one more item
that needs to be addressed before we close this week’s column. The
neglect of the assembly will eventually lead the neglect in other spiritual
responsibilities that rest upon the child of God. Forsaking the assembly
is only the first step into the far country; the journey away from God, once
begun, will eventually lead the man into the proverbial spiritual (and moral)
pigpen. Such is the inevitable consequence of forsaking the assembly!
Think about it!