Do You 'Go to Church'?

Hebrews 10:25 has that much quoted 'let us not give up meeting together'. This is often connected with Sunday worship, and reasonably so. It forms a biblical exhortation to 'go to church'.

But what is 'going to church' all about? What are the underlying reasons to do so (and to not give up doing so). Two great posts by David Fitch stir thinking helpfully. A couple of years ago he posted 6 Reasons Not To Go, and now he posts Two Reasons, the first of which is effectively a summary of those original six negative reasons.

I recommend you read these posts! He correctly points out that the language of 'going to church' itself is unhelpful, since after all 'church' is the collective of disciples rather than a place to visit or event to attend. However, within the collective there will be gatherings or meetings - hopefully the kind of which the Hebrews author doesn't want us to give up on.

Note the Hebrews passage also has a clear missional aspect: v24 'spur one another on to love and good deeds'. I'm sure the author must have had an outward motive here. Fitch picks this up: in 'going' to the gathering in order to 'submit' (reason no. 2) a believer is shaped by the Spirit to cooperate with God and His mission.

Fitch doesn't explore (at least in these postings) how the gathering itself may be missional, nor does he really argue one way or the other about frequency (other than an implied cultural assumption of weekly on Sunday). Can we learn to go and 'submit' in a way that is accessible and helpful for non-believers as well (in the hope that they will one day 'submit')? On the question of frequency should this submission be one expression of a life of submission (perhaps expressed in different ways at different frequencies)?

Have fun trying to answer these, but first ask yourself "Do you 'Go to Church"?, and "If so, why?".