Thinkin' about Sunday

Eric Carpenter wrote an interesting post Sunday, Sunday that looks at the danger of overemphasizing the Sunday meeting and under-emphasizing the rest of the week.

For example, yesterday my wife and I had breakfast with a Christian couple we just ran into over the internet. We had never met before but we spent a couple of hours at our favorite Saturday morning breakfast place talking about God, about Scripture, about the church and lots of other stuff. It was a great conversation and very edifying. We prayed together and shared a meal together. While we were there we got to meet an older lady from town and then also got to speak with one of the elders from the gathering we normally attend who was there with his family. He and I spoke a bit and I found out that the four kids who are with them are not their biological children. They had been childless for fourteen years of marriage but recently a different family that was meeting with the church got into an accident on their way home. The parents and some siblings were killed leaving these children orphaned. This man and his wife, childless all these years, opened their homes to care for these children. What a wonderful testimony of how God uses tragedy!

But you see that wasn't "church" because it didn't look like church as we understand it. We were in a restaurant, not a church building. We weren't singing pre-selected hymns. There wasn't a sermon and no one was in charge. It was just a group of Christian spending some time together. Sure we were edified and encouraged but it wasn't what our culture says church looks like and it wasn't on Sunday. It does kind of look like what the Bible describes though.

I think the church really limits itself when we try to cram being the church into an hour or two on Sunday. We miss a lot of rich experiences or at least we downgrade them as being a lesser form of church because it doesn't fit into our cultural expectations. Church is about a lot more, a LOT more than a formal meeting on Sunday. This week, make an effort Monday through Saturday to spend intentional time with other Christians and praise God for the fellowship of other believer seven days a week!