Weekly Reflections

“Church” is now a word with many more meanings – most of which obscure the Bible’s meaning. You can see this by observing the verbs that are used with it: “Going to church...,  attending church...,  missing church...” and so on. Paul’s verb is “coming together as the church”. Or meeting as the church.  We could say that the church meets.

But the Hebrews’ problem has also continued. The habit of not meeting has developed its 21^st century form – meeting irregularly, according to availability and the demands of other groups and people.

The form of meeting has also changed. Now the only meeting most people join in is a fairly formalised large group meeting. But the New Testament church seems to have had a lot more interaction in its meetings – presumably because they may have met also in smaller meetings.

The interaction was not just so they could all have a say (we know that some had too much to say), but so that they could all minister to each other, share the Word of God and pray with each other. Encouraging one another was a ministry of the Word in which each person could make a contribution. But they needed to be in the same place to do it. They needed to meet so that they could build each other up, and thus build up the church.

When you come together... what?

Dale