Dear Small Church Congregation,
Okay. You’ve repented of your sins, asked God to forgive you and placed your eternal future into the hands of Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You’ve decided to become a participating part of the Body of Christ. You’ve decided to seek the anointing of the Holy Spirit to determine your gifts, talents and calling from God. You’ve found a local congregation with which to worship. Now what? Now I challenge you to make the commitment that you will regularly associate with the other disciples in that local congregation.
I ran into a rather disheartening statistic recently during a forum designed to instruct and equip pastors of small churches for ministry in their respective communities. Across all Christian denominations in this country, an attender to worship services is considered a regular member if he/she is present 1.6 times a month. Let that number sink in—1.6 times a month. That’s obviously less than half the time if the local congregation meets an average of four times monthly. (Many meet more often than that.)
This brings into focus a very serious question—Why do people who claim to be disciples of Jesus not earnestly seek every opportunity available to worship God in a corporate setting? The answer to this question could be presented as being quite complicated. However, allow me to present one approach to the answer that might be simpler than expected.
At the end of the first paragraph of this letter, I challenged you to commit to something. That something was to regularly associate with other disciples in a local congregation. I do not mean to say that regular association involves attending worship services 1.6 times a month. In fact, I mean to challenge you to attend more often than that. Associate with other disciples of Christ every chance you get.
Why would I urge you to do this? Associating with disciples of Jesus does more than place you in an atmosphere of worship. It brings encouragement into your life from people who are experiencing the same trials and joys you are experiencing. It gives you a place to ask questions, receive advice and to give advice to others. It opens to you new opportunities to serve in the local body. It also puts you in a position to experience new things in life in general as you interact with folks who know things you don’t know or do things you don’t usually do.
Worship is great and should be experienced every time possible. Joining in with other disciples to be encouraged in your faith and to receive ministry or to be a blessing to others should never be underestimated. Worship is essential to your Christian walk.
Meeting with other disciples of Christ for worship and other activities is important as you all learn to live for Jesus in a world that does everything it can to keep you from doing that. Be aware that the devil wants to keep you from joining others in worship, Bible study or just living life together as Christians. He will distract you, put more to do in a day than you can do while awake, place numerous temptations in your path, bring persecutions against you and delay answers to prayers whenever he can. Satan will do anything he can to keep you away from other disciples of Jesus.
He wants to isolate you from any source of spiritual strength. Satan knows isolation yields spiritual weakness. He knows worship, Bible study, prayer meetings, etc. bring you victory over him. He knows corporate spiritual strength spreads to the individuals present and becomes personal spiritual strength. And Satan does not want you to be spiritually strong.
This is why I challenge you to commit to do the associating that will give you the faith and spiritual power to overcome the enemy of your soul. This is why you need to do everything you can to be in attendance at the local congregation more than 1.6 times a month. Be in attendance on a regular basis that surpasses that statistic.
Sincerely,
A Small Church Pastor
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