Episode Details

So far we’ve talked about the big why of Christ’s heavenly church, and the local purposes that this generates for us as members of that cosmic gathering (i.e. to ‘build’ that gathering by joining together in apostolic ministry).

But what about the actual physical church meetings that many of us are keen to get back to? What have we learned that can guide us in that task?

That’s the focus of the third installment in this mini-series on ‘Essential Services’.

I’m also glad to introduce a guest co-author into this post. As I was in the middle of writing this series, my friend and colleague at Reach Australia, Andrew Heard, sent me a draft of something that he had been writing along a similar line. It had so much good stuff in it, and was so similar to the direction I was heading, that we decided to collaborate on this final post in the series. (The bits in plain text are mine; the sections in italics are Andrew’s.)

So—given all that we have said so far (particularly from Ephesians), what is the rationale or purpose of actually gathering together in physical, local assemblies?

Interestingly, when we look in Ephesians (or elsewhere) for a link between the heavenly gathering and its earthly counterpart, we don’t find the kind of explicit connection we might expect—something useful for pastors to exhort their people with like: “Because you belong to the heavenly church, make sure that you join a good earthly, local church and go every week!”

In fact, in Ephesians, as in much of the New Testament, the importance of actually meeting getting in local gatherings is not so much an application or conclusion as a baseline presupposition. Of course we gather together, because what else would we do—as members of the new household of God, the body of Christ, the new humanity? The heavenly church of Christ is like a homing beacon that calls its earthly members together in local assemblies—all of us belonging to that cosmic body of Christ, delighted to be unified together in him, and seeking together to grow and fortify his body through the apostolic ministry of word and prayer.

The physical gathering of believers around Christ and his word in a particular place at a particular time is the visible expression of an invisible reality that is at the very heart of God’s purposes. He brings peace to us by reconciling us to himself, but at the same time he brings peace to the various groups that have been hostile to one another, that by his grace we might together be ‘one new man’. In Christ, we are all one—all sinners saved by grace to share the same standing before him, and with each other.

This is true spiritually in the heavenly assembly, and is understood to be true by faith. But it is given visible expression here on earth when sinners actually get up out of their houses, go to a common place, and stand shoulder to shoulder with other people they used to be alienated from—the Gentile actually standing together with the Jew—and both declaring and rejoicing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Without physically gathering we simply can’t give expression to this. We might hold this thought in our heads as we watch a centralized stream or video clip, knowing that others who are different from me are watching the same stream. But it is a pale thing in comparison to actually standing with those same people in a common space.

It is this reality, of being gathered physically with one another, that brings glory to God in the heavenly realms as the forces of evil look on and see the victory of