Beware the Drift

Since March our country has been closed down due to the Covid-19 virus.  To one degree or another, we have stopped following our normal routines and substituted alternate activities.  School in a school building became home school via computer.  Shopping for groceries became either an online order with contactless pickup or an extended wait in line as stores limited the number of shoppers.   Even corporate worship services at churches became personal internet worship in the home.  We have all been sequestered.  Life has been circumscribed by the walls of our homes.  For many, Sunday morning, with brothers and sisters at a meeting place, became a time to sleep in, lounge around and perhaps tune into the church’s video presentation.  Church attendance became like watching a favorite television show, you could watch live or watch at your convenience.  Of course, no one would know if while watching you were also doing something else-multitasking; which according to Barna Research 15% of practicing Christians do while watching the service.

More importantly to me is how many of us over the last four and a half months have simply lost the practice of worship on Sunday mornings.  Research claims that breaking a habit can take anywhere for two months to a year, and we are four months into limiting church, into meeting together as the church.  My fear is that some of us, having changed the routine of our Sundays, will simply continue in the new habit. 

Belief in God and following Jesus Christ are evidenced by certain actions which include gathering together to worship the Lord and encourage one another.  Certainly we can all worship alone, we have been doing that since the quarantine began, but being physically together in worship, is what the church does. We can reach out to each other through the internet, call or mail, but face to face support is what the church does.  You may say, “The New Testament is filled with long distance, written encouragement from various apostles.”  That is true.  But that is not the only encouragement those people received.  They were in close contact with fellow believers, contact which bolstered and encouraged the one who gave and the one who received.

If we continue to avoid contact, personal contact and corporate worship it will be easier and easier to simply drift away.  We can find other things to do on Sunday, needful things, and forego church on television.  We can find others who are of like mind and leave behind our brothers and sisters.   The drift away will be gradual, almost leisurely.

Then, almost without noticing it we will wake up one Sunday morning and realize we have been without worship or encouragement for a month or two, and it won’t really be that upsetting.  This is what I fear.  This virus upsetting our country will infect more than our bodies.  Don’t let it infect your soul and hinder your relationship to the Lord of Life.