Household Worship for Now
“Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge” reads the opening petition of Psalm 16. There’s a simplicity to the prayer that is worth our attention (I mentioned it, at least briefly, in the Easter message). David hasn’t stared into a mirror to build a laundry list of things he’d like to see God change. He isn’t moving ahead with his plans and motioning for God to hop into the passenger seat. Instead, here is a man who is humbly asking for God to just be God. Be who you are to me, he prays, because he trusts that God as himself, as nothing more or less, is what he needs the most.
It strikes me as the kind of praying that doesn’t come natural, the kind of praying that is an expression of the sincerest faith — I mean sincerest faith not as a person’s greatest achievement, but as whatever is left when that person has been reduced. We tend to think we pray our best when we’re strongest, but then the Psalms — the prayer book of the Bible — shows us the voice of weakness, one song after another. Mustard-seed faith, after all, isn’t a mulligan for the spiritual novice; it’s the way it goes when you finally discover the rock-bottom of yourself, should we be so blessed.
Why do I say this now? Because I suspect there is something like this happening at a corporate level in local churches around the world in this global pandemic. And rather than kick and scream and try to squirm our way out of this uncomfortable situation, I wonder if psalmist-like faith would teach us to hold on a minute. The rhythms of the church’s life have been upended (like at other times and places in history), and rather than paper over the loss and try to replicate business as usual, we should ask what God is doing (among countless things) in this moment, through this moment.
Why We Don’t Live-Stream a “Digital Gathering”
Those are the main concerns that occupy the pastors’ minds, even going back a month ago when we cancelled the first Sunday service and chartered our course of action. We clarified the primary task in front of us to be faithfully shepherding the flock, not replicating all of our same rhythms through digital formats. Granted, we are using digital formats, such as the video messages and daily devotionals, but we want to be forthright about the limitations of digital. While digital can stand in for some things as an inferior substitute, it can’t for others, and the attempt itself might even confuse the meaning of the real thing. This explains, at least partly, why we are not live-streaming Sunday worship services as digital corporate gatherings.
The meaning of the church’s corporate worship is that we are the church literally gathered together in worship — literally as in physically, non-virtually gathered together. It is when we assemble in worship that we are the local, visible, tangible manifestation of the universal church, and to not do this as it’s meant to be, is to do something different.
We’re doing something different on Sunday mornings right now. It’s not corporate worship as a church; it’s household worship in our various expressions, with a common liturgy, spread throughout the cities.
A church is a combination of households, of course — families large and small, young marrieds and unmarried, widows and empty-nesters — and solid Christian households make solid Christian churches. Yet we must always remember that in the church, the sum is greater than its parts. Though there are wondrous overlaps and practical metaphors, the household and the church are not the same. They each are accountable to God in different ways, and to each belong distinct, institutional-shaping practices. In particular, Jesus has given the Lord’s Supper to the church for when we “come together” (as in 1 Corinthians 11:17, 18, 20, 33, 34; 14:23, 26 — and he has given dinnertime to the household, see 1 Corinthians 11:22).
Your pastors believe the Table is special for us as a whole church, and we would discourage households from acting as though they were the whole church. Abstaining from the Lord’s Supper in this season is one way to recognize that our household worship is incomplete.
We Are Missing Something
We want to be clear on that. Any kind of worship service besides physically gathering together is not as it should be. Household worship is missing something, and that might be at least one discovery we’re making in this season.
We want more of Jesus in our homes these days, and I’ve been praying that over us. But do you know Jesus’s design for our homes to get more of him? It’s when we’re all together. That doesn’t discredit the work of the Holy Spirit filling individual believers, but it does mean that the corporate gathering of the church is a special event that we’re currently having to do without. Our households week after week are getting less than what we would get if we were all under one roof singing God’s praise.
And we are getting less because this is where God has brought us. It’s not ideal, but it’s what we’ve been reduced to, for now. So let us lean into the less.
We miss one another, don’t we? I don’t mean just the experience of corporate worship, but also the numerous little asides we often take for granted without even knowing it. We have lived in such abundance as a society that we hardly recognize as precious those things that are truly precious. But now we’re asking not only for God to be our God, but for him to let the church be church.
More Resources
God is at work in this.
Get a copy of John Piper’s new book, free of charge.
Why We Won’t Gather This Sunday, by Jonathan Parnell and David Mathis
Special Letter, by Jonathan Parnell
What Courage Might Corona Unleash?, by Marshall Segal
Come What May, by David Mathis
Our Hope During Coronavirus, by Stacy Brennecke
Husbands, Engage Your Wives, by Joel Button
Corona Cannot Prevail Against Her, by David Mathis
Let the Lily Have Today, by Marshall Segal
Additional resources are available at citieschurch.com/covid19
