I issued an advisory last week to explain how the church is opening up after MCCY eased restrictions.
8.30 am service will now accommodate 235 people, with 135 in Sanctuary 1 and 100 in Sanctuary 2 as the overflow room while 11 am service will accommodate 100 people in Sanctuary 2.
It is time for us to return to church for Sunday worship!
Physically Gathering for Worship
Online worship is never a good substitute for the real thing. Throughout the Bible, we see God’s people physically gathering together for worship.
The Psalmist says: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’” (Psalm 122:1) This is part of the whole collection of Psalms, known as the Psalms of Ascent, which pilgrims would sing as they made their way to the Temple in Jerusalem.
During the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC, synagogues emerged as places for Torah reading, communal prayer and worship. The physical gathering of God’s people despite the absence of the Temple again cannot be missed.
In the NT, the Greek word for ‘church’ is ekklēsía, which can also be translated as ‘assembly’. It is no coincidence that whenever Christians assemble for worship, there you’d find a church.
In Acts 2, the early church “42devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favour with all the people.”
Notice that the believers met in homes, but they also worshipped at the temple together.
It is no wonder that the author of Hebrews exhorted the Christians not to neglect meeting together as some were already in the habit of doing (Hebrews 10:25).
Can the Gathering Be Virtual?
Why do we have to gather physically together? Can the gathering be virtual?
David Gundersen, a pastor, says: “We are embodied creatures. We are not ethereal beings made to float in virtual space. We are created to see and hear and taste and touch the physical world that God has made. In recent months, we have seen the power of our online world but we have also felt its limitations. No loving couple gladly accepts a ‘long-distance relationship’ as ideal. Neither should a loving church family.”
There is a difference between tuning in into a sermon from home and listening to the proclamation of God’s Word alongside one another. In the latter, we are reminded that we are accountable to each other and we ought to correct, rebuke and encourage one another with great patience and careful instruction (2 Timothy 4:2).
Then, there is the physical meal around the Lord’s Table. We see the elements of bread and cup; we hear the words concerning their significance; we touch them, we smell them and finally we internalise them. Christ has instituted this meal to give us a multi-sensory experience to increase our faith as we are being brought into his very presence.
Another name for this meal is ‘Holy Communion’. We are not only communing with our Saviour over a meal, we are also communing with the gathered people of God, the Body of Christ.
Don’t Need to Tick All the Boxes
Although we still cannot sing behind mask due to the more infectious Delta variant, this restriction should all the more make us look forward with yearning to a time in the future when we will again be allowed to “address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with [our] heart.” (Ephesians 5:19)
Meanwhile, we should not wait to tick all the boxes before we decide to return.
Do not settle for the virtual church. It will hurt our Christian discipleship. It will cause our faith to be stunted. We may enjoy the convenience of worshipping from home; we can switch from one virtual service to another so as to obtain maximum worshipper satisfaction; we do not need to deal with messy relationships. However, such individual Christianity, such autonomous faith cannot be found anywhere in the Bible.
On the other hand, our corporate worship serves as a witness to the world. Whether rain or shine, Covid or no Covid, we show our neighbours that our commitment to love God and to love one another remains steadfast and unmovable.
Concrete Steps You Can Take
So my brothers and sisters, please come back for corporate worship. Let me suggest some concrete steps you can take.
For those who were attending the 8.30 am service pre-Covid, you can now come back every Sunday for worship because the seating capacity is 235. This was roughly the number of attendees we had before the pandemic, so there is enough space to accommodate everyone.
For those who were attending the 11 am service pre-Covid, we are not able to accommodate everyone on a single Sunday as our current seating capacity is still limited to 100. The good news is that we have been given permission to reconfigure Sanctuary 2 so we should be able to accommodate more people soon.
Meanwhile, consider switching to the 8.30 am service. Otherwise, reserve your ticket early for one Sunday so that you will definitely be able to come for the 11 am on-site service. For the rest of the month, go to the church website to check for the availability of tickets on Saturday. Only if there are no more tickets left do you then worship online.
Children Are Most Welcome
As for parents, besides the 1st Sunday where your children will be attending U12, bring the whole family for corporate worship on at least one other Sunday. Don’t be too concerned about the noise your children might generate; don’t be too concerned that your children are depriving others of their tickets.
We want to welcome your little ones into our midst too. Children don’t need to fully understand what’s going on during the service. The whole experience of coming to church for worship and observing what the adults do can help to shape their faith and impact their spiritual life in ways beyond our comprehension.
Neither Be Complacent Nor Overly Cautious
I know the number of new Covid-19 cases is not abating. We should not be complacent where observing safety measures is concerned but we also don’t need to be overly cautious. Let’s exercise some measure of faith when we come to church. We do our part in observing social distancing; we do not linger in church after service; we stay home if we are unwell.
Otherwise, let’s come confidently into the house of the Lord and trust in his protection. I won’t presume that God will definitely keep us from Covid but I’d earnestly pray for his mercies to prevail!
Are We Getting Too Comfortable?
When we were preaching through the Book of Ezra, we learnt that although King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to their homeland to rebuild the temple, the majority of them remained in Babylon. Why?
God’s people had comfortably settled down in Babylon. They had gotten used to the new normal. It was too troublesome for them to make the move, especially those with young children or the elderly and frail. It would take four months to travel from Babylon to Jerusalem. The journey was fraught with dangers and risks. Moreover, they would have to set up their homes all over again. It would take too much effort; it was too much of a sacrifice. It was more convenient to stay put.
Have we gotten so used to the new normal that we would rather remain status quo – worship from home? Perhaps it is just too troublesome, too time-wasting, too dangerous to return to on-site service.
Shouldn’t this be a good opportunity for us to begin to offer to God a sacrifice that costs us something, an expression of our gratitude for the ultimate sacrifice that Christ has offered to redeem us? I am appealing to you to return on the basis of love!
The church exists to worship God. Our weekly gatherings are rehearsals for the eventual gathering around the throne of God in heaven, which definitely will not be virtual but physical.
