Make Fellowship a Habit

In the summer of 2015, in that first year of Cities Church, I realized that in the progress and transitions of young-adult life I had lost a handle on something basic. I had no regular pattern of exercise.

Somewhere in getting married in 2007, and having twin boys in 2010, and having a daughter in November 2014, and planting in 2015, exercise had fallen by the wayside. I thought I didn’t have any time to exercise. But over time, and prompted one day by some wise input from my wife, I realized this was a lame excuse.

Even with small kids, there is enough time for the non-negotiables: for daily spiritual disciplines and weekly worship and community group, and generous family time and reasonable work hours, and at least seven hours of sleep, and exercise. I finally owned up the fact that if I was not getting at least some minimal regular exercise, I must be making some bad choices, and trying to do too many things, or investing myself in some unimportant things.

I had little business working overtime, or checking social media, or keeping up with the Twins and Vikings if I was not adequately making time for the basics of both being a Christian and being human.

Here at our five-year anniversary as a church, my exhortation to us, for our next five years, and the next five decades, is (in the pace and pressures of modern life) not to cut corners on the vital dimensions of what it means to survive and thrive as a Christian. Perhaps you’ve made space for family time and adequate sleep and regular exercise. But have you compromised on the basics of what it takes to survive and thrive in Christ? Have your personal spiritual habits slipped, or vanished? And here’s the main point this morning: Have you compromised your commitment to this church, for Sunday worship or community and life groups?

Maybe over time your part in the body and bride of Christ has fallen too low on the list of priorities. Instead of building your personal and family life around the very simple structure of this church — and it is remarkably simply; we are decidedly not over-programmed here — you’re content with your attendance and engagement being spotty. And when this habit of fellowship slips, you miss the means of grace God means for these people to be to you, and the means of grace he means for you to be in the lives of others. You deprive yourself and others of joy.

This five-year-old church doesn’t exist to cater to the preferences of our individual families or the whims of our fast-paced and noncommittal modern lives. Rather, God calls us, as individuals and families to embrace the priority and preciousness of Christ’s church.

Jesus loved the church and gave himself for her. Do we?

The societal pressures we feel toward isolation, away from committed relationships, may seem to come at us in new ways, but the temptation to fall out of habit with the people of God is ancient. Almost two thousand years ago, the author to the Hebrews wrote:

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24–25)

Brothers and sisters, as members of Cities Church, we have covenanted with each other “to walk together in Christian love” and “to sustain [our church’s] worship, ordinances, and discipline.” And to watch over one another in brotherly love; to remember one another in prayer; to aid one another in sickness and distress; to cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech.

Without forming and sustaining the habit of Sunday mornings together, and Wednesday evenings together — even when it’s inconvenient — we will not fulfill these commitments, and be the church we’ve pledged to be to each other.

So, here at our five-year mark, in a society in which the real-life, face-to-face social fabric is deteriorating, let’s renew our resolve be the church to each other. Make fellowship a habit. When in doubt, don’t bow out. Let’s adjust our lives to the very minimal structure of this church, and not be content with covenant delinquency.

It will only get tougher in the years to come. Let’s continue to be the church in practice, not just in theory, in our next five years and until Jesus returns.

Let us pray.

Prayer of Confession

Father in heaven, we need your help. Our world seems to slowly stretch us further apart, rather than bring us to together in face-to-face, accountable relationships. And we are selfish. We are prone to feed ourselves bad excuses, to serve our sense of comfort and convenience. Something in us bristles against accountability and the curbing of personal freedom. Who among us would say we have walked together in Christian love as we ought? We acknowledge that genuine covenant community is not easy for sinners, and confess that we have often failed, and failed each other.

Father, forgive us for this, we pray, and for the many ways we fall short, as we confess our individual sins to you in the silence of this moment.

Father, we look to your Son, who is building his church. The gates of hell, and the sin still dwelling in us, will not prevail against Jesus’s church. So, Father, in a day in which communities are fragmenting, and covenants are held cheap, and accountability is eschewed, make us faithful to Jesus and to his bride. Work in us, by the power of your Spirit, to make and keep fellowship a habit. Help us not to suffer the pathetic excuses the Enemy whispers in our ears, but to be the church in sickness and distress, in discomfort and inconvenience, week in and week out, for our joy and the joy of this church. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.