Maybe the Part-Time Churchgoer Smells the Coffee

Hat tip to Arthur Sido (who blogs at the voice of one crying out in suburbia) for pointing out a post written by Trevin Wax at the Gospel Coalition blog.

Wax writes about the "part-time churchgoer" so prevalent in today's [even a faithful] church.  He constructs a fictional couple, Geoff and Christine, who have children and serve faithfully in their local church.  Geoff is even a deacon.  But as faithful as they may think they are, they miss quite a number of Sundays to engage in other activities.  Without knowing it, they are "part-time" churchgoers.  Please read the short post here to understand what I am writing about.

My purpose in this post is to call attention to a point that I think is completely missed by both the author and most all of the commenters.

So Geoff and Christine miss church to engage in sports activities for their kids, go on vacation, take care of sick kids, host visiting family, and several other reasons.  What's the big deal? 

Getting right to the point here, Geoff and Christine may think it's okay to miss church because they aren't missed at church when they aren't there.  Nobody will notice.  And the reason nobody will notice is because the "body of Christ" that Wax attempts to portray really doesn't function like a body.  You know, like the body that the apostle Paul writes about in his epistles.  After all, if the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?

Imagine your body missing a major organ or other part.  If I woke up today totally blind in one eye it would affect me for the rest of my life, or until whatever temporary problem disappeared.  If I suddenly had surgery to remove a kidney, the results would be drastic.  If I were missing even one single toe, my foot planting on the ground on every step would be altered enough to give me posture problems or hinder my ability to run. 

Why do we think Paul used the metaphor of a body to describe the church?  It is because any body part that is missing would cause such a notable difference that we would suffer as a result.  But when Geoff and Christine miss church, does it noticeably affect the rest of the body?  It affects the body when the pastor isn't preaching and there's a guest in the pulpit.  But why wouldn't the body suffer the same when Geoff and Christine are absent?  Each member has the same care for each other, after all. (1 Cor. 12:25)  I don't ever recall a time where I was told that the body had a more difficult time functioning because I wasn't there on a given Sunday.  People never tell me that we were missed greatly by not being there. Is the pastor more important than Geoff and Christine?  If so, then there is a problem with the church they attend.

Maybe Geoff and Christine have noticed (or maybe they haven't) like we have that fellowship with other Christian families involved in sports is often better than the fellowship at church.  Why would that be?

The answer could be that the problem isn't with the people who don't show up on Sunday, but rather with the church that doesn't truly miss its absentees; the church that is about program and structure and not people.

A Strange Fellowship

One time I was at a pizza parlor and in walked a group of about ten people.  I tend to be a people watcher, so I looked at this group.  It immediately struck me that there was something strange about them.  So I kept looking to see what it could be.

It wasn't long before I was able to see that no two people in this group seemed to "go together."  There were no similarities that I could use to put a label on things.  It wasn't a group of three women with Gucci bags talking about where they got their last mani-pedi.  It wasn't a couple of dudes wearing the same team's jerseys getting a seat for the game that would be on TV.  They didn't have conference nametags on, and it wasn't a sports team in uniform.  It seemed a random collection of ages, clothing styles, hairstyles, economic status, etc.

It finally occurred to me that this group was probably a Christian church group.  Later on, I heard several of them talking about a bible study and things that were happening at church.  I had correctly identified them.

When I look back over my church life, I am sometimes amazed at who my friends have been.  In many cases, I see really nothing in common with those people short of being in Christ with them.  And that's the thing that overrides other things.  We then have found new things to do in common.  Things that I wouldn't do with other people more like me.

Not only are many of these people those who have minimal things in common with me, they aren't "normal" people in the usual sense of the word.  They aren't the types of personalities that I might wish I kept company with even if they did have much in common with me.  Many of them are altogether strange.  Of course, they might think the same of me if they really sat down to ponder it.  But that's the beauty of fellowship with those people we simply know as "Christians."  This alone should tell us that it is a work of God.  We certainly wouldn't have planned it this way.

But The Midweek Group Is My Church

Every church I've attended that claims to be Reformed has taught that the Sunday church meeting (aka worship service) is the central and most important event of the week for Christians.  If somebody had to decide to attend only one church activity during the week, the worship service should be it.  It contains the central focus of worship - the preaching of, and thus the listening to - the sermon, and singing and praying to the Lord.
Some people have neglected to attend on Sunday, but make other meetings during the week their main focus.  Inquiring leaders might get the reply, "But the midweek group is my church," and use the reply to warn against doing this.

But I'm wondering if those people aren't on to something.  Maybe they sense that those other weekly gatherings have more fellowship, more one-anothers, more stimulating one another to love and good deeds, more encouraging of one another (Heb 10:23-25) that is supposed to go along with not neglecting to assemble together.  And as Eric Carpenter writes at A Pilgrim's Progress, a former church of his had a built-in fellowship time that was very much enjoyed.  Arthur Sido, in the comments, notes that a former church his family attended had a difficult time getting people to stop fellowshipping during a built-in time so they could attend the formal teaching.  If more of the one-anothers that are listed in the New Testament occur in settings other than the Sunday meeting, why not allow somebody who realized this the benefit of the doubt in meeting during those other times?