Easter Sunday has come and gone and church's across America experienced their typical annual increase in attendance. According to Gallup, 6 out of 10 Americans plan on attending church on Easter, compared to the usual number of 3 out of 10 that say they attend church once a week.
Don't get me wrong, it's remarkable that so many people decide to enter places of worship to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. The problem, however, is that many of us understand His sacrifice, pay homage to that sacrifice, but lie dormant for another year before stepping into a church again.
Of course there are a multitude of reasons that we offer as to why that is the case. Perhaps we are away from home at college and believe we won't be able to find a good church home while we're at school (I'm all too familiar with this one). Perhaps we were offended or disrespected by another member, or even the pastor, of our former congregation and find it difficult to risk putting ourselves in that position again by finding a new church. Perhaps we are clinging to Jesus' words in Matthew 18:20 as an excuse to not attend church.
But we need to keep a couple of things in mind. We do not go to church to appease anyone. It's not a social club, it's a place to plug in. Just like plugging a phone into a charger, we plug into the church to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that we can be equipped to exemplify Christ in our everyday lives.
For example, most of us were required to learn and take several levels of a foreign language in high school and college. As we progressed to higher and higher levels of the language, we likely became better and better at reading, writing and speaking that language. Not to mention we likely became more comfortable doing those things around others.
However, unless we are dedicating our lives to undertaking that language, there comes a point where our education in that language ceases. Then, slowly but surely, our familiarity with it begins to fade, we become less comfortable with it around others, and eventually we get to a point where we can still remember some key phrases but for the most part have forgotten everything we learned.
The phrase, "If you don't use it, you lose it" doesn't just pertain to subjects that we learned in school. It most certainly includes incredibly important aspects of Christianity, from knowing scripture, sharing the gospel with others and everything in between.
Ephesians 4:11-12 tells us that, ". . . he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." This is one of the various areas of scripture that indicate the importance of plugging into a church body under the direction of a pastor.
So now that we've attended church to revere the resurrection of Christ, let's turn a day of reverence into a lifetime of reverence by continuing to immerse ourselves in the church. If 7 days without Christ makes one weak, then what does a year without Him make?
