The Service of Assembly

“People who serve are people who stay.” This is a popular saying that, for a few decades now, has gained popularity as a truism within American church growth movements and around the staff meeting tables of myriad local churches. The idea behind this maxim comes from a line of thinking that prioritizes church growth via programmatic pathways focusing on guest assimilation and member retention, or as another saying puts it, a need to “close the back door.” These pathways or “assimilation systems” aim to maximize guest experience in hopes that they become regular attenders, regular attenders become meaningfully connected or members (if the church has formal membership), and members find ministries or programs in which they are committed to serve. Because of course, “people who serve are people who stay.”

These strategic impulses gained significant influence within the church-growth and megachurch movements during 1990s and into the 2000s amid a growing awareness of decreasing church participation and an evangelical concern to reach an increasingly secularizing American culture. Presented as practical and reproducible models for church growth, they were popularized by figures such as Billy Hybels and Rick Warren, through influential model churches such as Willow Creek and Saddleback.  Books like The Purpose Driven Church, as well as a wide variety of conferences and training organizations, served to reinforce the idea that churches could reliably grow if systems for guest retention, assimilation, and participation were prioritized. While, in many cases, these movements began with honorable motivations and a desire to see people evangelized, the lost saved, American church attendance increase, and the Kingdom advance, they often veered into practices that measured success by corporate standards rather than biblical ones. How many people “reached” or “engaged”? What are our retention rates, and how many people are committed to serving in ministries that make the whole thing go?

This has contributed to a culture within many local churches that emphasizes “everyone serving” as a measurement of a healthy church. Such a culture often emphasizes involvement in a ministry, a program, or formal lane of service as the necessary means of true contribution and obedience in “using one’s gifts” within the Body. The result, often, is discouragement from a membership that often simply does not have the personal bandwidth, either due to family commitments, age, or season of life, to be locked into a role in a formal ministry program as an expectation for healthy, meaningful membership.

From a pastoral perspective, it might be surprising to hear that I’m not overly concerned with “closing the back door.” While there is every reason to be robustly for people attending church, becoming Christians, joining a church, and using their gifts in Christ for the good of the local body and the advance of the Kingdom, our aim ought not be that people would stay because they have come through an assimilation process and are now committed to a place to serve. A Christian should come to church because they are a Christian. They should stay at a church because they have given themselves to that particular body.  Their devotion to the church should flow from their understanding of the nature and purpose of the church, as well as the commitment they have made to their brothers and sisters in Christ by virtue of their self-conscious membership within that body.  Many local church leaders would do well to recover a view of regenerate church membership that understands and fulsomely embraces their service of assembling. Church members must give themselves to cultivating a view of membership that prioritizes and sees the regular, self-consciously engaged, and biblical participation in their local body’s Lord’s Day assembly as their true and central service within the church.

While there are many New Testament texts that are worth our consideration in this pursuit, I would draw our attention to a few that are particularly worth consideration. First, in Ephesians 2, Paul, having extolled the glories of the Christian’s salvation and their shared unity in Christ, moves toward a vivid description of the essential nature of local churches, particularly in their assembling. Listen to how he describes it.

“So, then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” – Ephesians 2:19-22

Here the gathering together of the members of the church is described as the building of a temple, block by block, individual by individual, where God is pleased to meet with and dwell among them. Moreover, the author of Hebrews, in exhorting church members to “not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some,” frames this assembly in terms of the Christian privilege to enter the “holy places” of God’s presence, with “full assurance of faith,” by the “blood of Jesus” (Heb. 10:19-25). Finally, Peter is perhaps most clear in telling his churches that in their assembling, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Pet. 2:5). The point here is that the assembling of the local church is much more than merely the gathering together and retention of disparate attendees. Local churches, as the intentional assembly of Christ’s people, in a true and significant way are the New Testament holy places, the fulfillment of the temple’s dwelling-place function, where God meets with and sanctifies his gathered people through the ordinary means of grace in the ministry of the Word, their worship, and their committed service to one another.

With this understanding of the nature of local church gatherings in view, we also see that each of these texts, within their context, proceeds to give further insight into who and what church members are called to be to one another. Later in Ephesians Paul describes how Ephesian church members serve one another by “speaking the truth in love” so that the body might “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” (Eph. 4:15-16). The author of Hebrews further exhorts Christian service within the gathered assembly, describing it as the mutual “(drawing) near with a true heart in full assurance of faith…(holding) fast the confession of our hope without wavering…and (considering) how to stir one another up to love and good works…(and) encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near” (vss. 10:22-25). Moreover, both Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 speak to our service of the Word through the Spirit to one another as we allow it to “dwell in (us) richly, teaching, and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in (our) hearts to God.” (Col. 3:16). Here we have a view of our participation in corporate singing together in our gatherings as a true and spiritually edifying ministry to one another. We could go on. In fact, there are dozens of “one-another’s” that we are called to engage in as service to our brothers and sisters in Christ when we are assembled on the Lord’s Day.

This is not to say that pathways, trainings, and systems intended to help members find places to serve in more specialized or programmatic ministries in the life of the church are inherently wrong. Areas of formal service such as children’s ministries, music ministries, welcome and hospitality ministries, discipleship programs, teaching ministries, and others can all play important roles in contributing to the life of a healthy church. These types of ministry teams and programs are often necessary in helping a church’s elders oversee growth by wisely stewarding the spiritual gifts represented within a membership. However, to view these kinds of programs and service pathways as a means to growth via guest retention and “closing the back door” is biblically backward. Pastorally speaking, give me ten members who show up each and every Lord’s Day self-consciously ready to assemble before God together, to submit themselves to the Word of God together, hold fast to their confession of Christ together, love one another, encourage one another in the Word, speak the truth in love to one another, stir up one another to love and good works, pray together, and to loudly sing the glorious truths of the gospel and their salvation together, over a fully staffed volunteer roster for a week’s worth of programs.

In the end, fellow pastors and church leaders, seek to cultivate a culture that truly values, promotes, and equips your church members to embrace their assembling as true service within the body. Christian, make the weekly Lord’s Day gathering a priority. Take your presence among the Body and membership seriously. Come to church early, ready to engage your brothers and sisters in the kinds of ways mentioned above. Finally, come ready to give yourself to the Word and one another as you fulsomely participate in every element of your church’s service. These are the foremost activities of biblical service we are called to, and by God’s grace, he has called and equipped every member for them.  Sometimes the most profound service we can offer our local church is that of simply showing up at our Lord’s Day gatherings ready to be the church.