William Willimon, chaplain at Duke University, was invited to preach in an inner-city church. The service, with its long preliminaries, lasted 21?2 hours. When it was finally over, Willimon was exhausted and asked the pastor, “Why do these people stay in church so long?”
His friend replied, “Unemployment runs nearly 50 percent here. This means that when our people go about during the week, everything they see, everything they hear tells them: ‘You are a failure. You are nothing because you do not have a good job, you do not have a nice car, you have no money.’ So I must get their eyes focused on Christ. Through the hymns, the prayers, the preaching I say to them, ‘That is a lie! You are royalty! You are citizens of the kingdom of God!’ It takes me a long time to get them straight because the world perverts them so terribly.”
The world is constantly pressuring Christians to conform to its values. We need to read God’s Word and encourage one another so that we will be able to keep alive a strong sense of who we are in Christ.
Why go to church? Because God uses the exhortation and love of fellow believers to reassure us that the world’s message is a lie and that God’s good news is true.
— Dennis J. De Haan
The world will try to pressure us
To fit into its godless mold;
That’s why we need encouragement
To keep our hearts from growing cold. —Sper
Seven days without church makes one weak.