Corporate Worship is Essential

Grace Community Church in Sun Valley California has been in and out of court for the past few weeks. North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara California had a “cease and desist order” posted on its doors forbidding the congregation to hold indoor services. Many other churches in California and across the country are continuing to meet under-the-radar in disobedience to local regulations.

It is wrong, especially five months into the present crisis, to require God’s people to stay home from worship on Sunday. When this all started in March, most congregations temporarily suspended in-person worship for several weeks. This was voluntary and only on a short-term basis. Most churches began meeting again in May or June, convinced that suspending worship any longer would constitute disobedience to God and be spiritually damaging to God’s people. This is not about finances. For most of us, God has been wonderfully supplying through the entire ordeal. While it is a constitutional issue, it more than that, it is a biblical issue.

There is not a one-size-fits-all answer to the trials we all are facing. Many congregations across the country have found ways to comply with governmental regulations and also hold services. Praise God for that. Restrictions vary from community to community. Individual congregations vary. Some California congregations are complying by holding outdoor services. However other congregations find that solution unworkable. Independent local churches must make their own decisions.

As long as we can obey God and government, we will do both.

God has set up human government for our good. The biblical responsibilities of government are to protect life, protect individuals from abuse, and to keep the peace. However, when the moment comes where obedience to government requires disobedience to God, we must obey the higher authority.

Congregational worship is a command.

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Throughout church history, God’s people have gathered together to worship even when it was forbidden by human authorities. Roman believers, Reformation Protestants, English separatists, and faithful believers under the oppression of communism, have all met in the open or in secret in order to fellowship with one another and to be obedient to God.

Virtual worship is not sufficient.

“But we can worship online or by means of livestream.”

This is dangerous thinking both in and outside of the church.

In certain circumstances, this is the best an individual believer can do, but a virtual service does not fulfill the biblical mandate for worship. Worship is more than listening to a message online. New Testament worship is a one-another event that can only effectively take place in person. Paul told believers that they should sing to one another (Ephesians 5:19). We are required to encourage one another, to edify one another, challenge one another, confront one another, and love one another. This interaction must occur on all age levels in a true community of believers. To restrict a church from meeting is to require disobedience to God. In the same way, a believer that attends only by means of livestream is enjoying an insufficient substitute for real worship. Virtual worship should not be used as a matter of convenience but rather only temporarily in instances of true necessity.

This has been a wake-up call for many in broader evangelicalism (and in fundamentalism too). In an interview with The Daily Wire’s Andrew Klavan, John MacArthur rendered this evaluation of American Evangelicalism.

“And let me just pivot a little bit to say this: The Church in America has been so caught up in pragmatism; it has drunk the Kool-Aid of trying to devise a religion that non-religious people will like and accept, that it’s afraid to be courageous because it might offend somebody,” he concluded.

We agree.

May God give His people the grace to stand and may God frustrate the plans of the wicked.