Why We’re Prioritizing Sunday Mornings and Sunday Nights
When my family first started attending Grace Rancho, we under stood that the Bible calls us to gather together as believers in a local church, but we had never experienced what that’s actually supposed to look like. As church members of Grace Rancho, one of our affirmations in the church covenant is: “We affirm our desire to weave our lives together in brotherly love, as we are members of one another, exercising tender care for each other, faithfully admonishing and encouraging one another as occasion may require.” What a beautiful picture that paints, just as we see in Acts 2 and Colossians 3.
The idea of gathering in a way where we “weave our lives together” had seemed more like a good thing for a church to strive to be, but was unattainable. Grace Rancho changed our perspective on that completely as we saw the body living that out. Because we had never seen a healthy church functioning as the organism it’s called to be in 1 Corinthians 12, and we had never felt the familial love and care for our souls, we came into Grace Rancho not knowing what it meant to truly prioritize church.
Though we are not faithful, God always is. Over a period of about a year, he used the preaching of his word to convict us, and his bride to admonish us, in order to shape our hearts to truly love his church. This has caused us to see the importance of prioritizing church and I want to share a few reasons why our family now prioritizes both Sunday mornings and Sunday nights.
We Love Christ and His Bride
The foundation of our family’s decision to prioritize Sunday mornings and Sunday nights started with God working in our hearts to love his church the way that he intended us to. On August 8, 2021, Pastor Eric preached a sermon titled, “Prioritize the Local Church”. There were multiple sermons that convicted us that summer, but this one was the catalyst of our heart change. It greatly convicted us and began the process of shaping our hearts to love our church family in a way that we had never experienced before. In his sermon, Pastor Eric posed the question: “What does it say about our love for Jesus if we can’t stand the church? Is that even possible? You say, ‘Jesus I love you, but your bride, I can’t stand her. I don’t want to have her anywhere near me. Jesus I love you, but I’m not going to gather with all of the other people who love you.’”
He went on to explain how personal it is for Jesus when someone has issues with his people or persecutes them. He connected this to when Jesus approached Saul in Damascus, as Saul had been persecuting Christ’s followers and instead of Jesus saying, “Why are you persecuting my church?” He said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
As my wife Lexy and I let all that soak in, we realized that we weren’t loving Christ or his bride the way we should be. We showed partiality and weren’t making the brethren more significant than ourselves. We had to ask God for forgiveness and his help to love his bride the way he does.
We are so thankful that God gave us a newfound love and appreciation for him and his bride. As this happened, church went from being a moral Christian obligation to us simply desiring to be around our church family as much as possible.
The Intimacy of Sunday Evenings for Needy People Like Us
As our desire to be with our church family grew, we also began to see how much we needed our church family. That need became more and more apparent once we started prioritizing Sunday nights.
Sunday mornings are a huge blessing as we gather together and worship God through song, corporate prayer, and the preaching of his Word. After service, we are able to be hospitable to visitors and catch up with people, but Sunday evenings are a blessing in their own way and a perfect pairing to Sunday mornings.
Sunday evenings have this smaller, informal setting that allows you to slow down and draw closer to your church family. In the evening services it’s encouraging to see different men have a chance to preach and bless us with what they’ve studied in the Word. Something that is equally as special is the time that we have to share prayer requests and pray for one another, bearing each other’s burdens. In September 2021, we saw firsthand how important this time is and how much our family needs it. We had received notice that we needed to find a new place to live and were scrambling to get that figured out. We were able to open up on a Sunday evening and share our needs and our struggles throughout the process. Our church family came right alongside us. They prayed for us, they were on the lookout for us, they comforted us, and they rejoiced as we rejoiced, watching the Lord provide for us.
Sunday evenings can make for a long day, especially with little ones, but it’s always worth it. Sunday is the most exciting day of the week for our family because we get to be surrounded by the people we love not once, but twice in one day.
We Want to Disciple Our Children Well
We are at a crucial time with the age of our kids. In a world that is completely rebellious to the ways of the Lord and does whatever it can to drag our kids into it, we are fighting to show our kids what “normal” and “good” truly are. I couldn’t imagine doing that alone. We are in dire need of people who are willing to stand side-by-side with us to uphold the gospel at whatever the cost. As it is becoming increasingly uncommon to f ind people living out what the Bible teaches, we need the people in our church to be the ones surrounding our kids and reinforcing what we are teaching them. A big part of our lives as Christian parents is showing our kids how much we value our church and why. We had a period where we struggled to do this for our kids, but God used people in our church to help us. There are many ways that God helped us grow in this area, but a couple examples come to mind. One would be the parenting growth group with Mark Severance, and the other is when Isaiah and Tria Vasquez opened up their home to us to read Shepherding a Child’s Heart together. God used their influence to encourage us to model how import ant church is to our children and to make our family’s commitment to the body a normal part of our lives for our kids to see.
Family may be our first ministry, but I think there is this misconception that when times are hard we should stop going to church to focus on our family. One of the greatest ways to care for my family’s needs is to surround us with people who love Jesus and can speak biblical truth into our lives. If I keep my wife at home, what ladies will speak into her life? If I keep my kids at home, what example am I showing them? That church is optional or secondary compared to other things in life? If I isolate myself as the leader of my home, how do I know my deceptive heart is not leading my family in the wrong direction? There is wisdom in taking some focused time with family, but let’s not take so much time that we weather the storm alone.
We Want to Be an Example to Our Church
In 2020 our church was holding services outdoors and children’s classes were on hold. We had a toddler at the time that recently learned to walk and wanted to explore everywhere she could, so sitting in one place for an hour-and-a-half-long church service just didn’t seem pos sible. Either Lexy or I would be in and out of the service missing half the sermon and then after service one of us would have conversations with people in 30-second increments as we ran after our little explorer. We felt defeated and started thinking, “What’s the point of coming? We might as well just stay at home and live stream so that we can at least have a better chance of actually getting through the sermon.” If you look closely at our thinking you’ll notice something. We were only focused on how being at church impacted our family and there was nothing about how our presence might be an encouragement to someone else.
Pastor Mark noticed the difficulties we were having and lovingly came alongside us. He encouraged us to push through the phase that we were in and to keep going to service even if it wasn’t the perfect experience we were hoping for. He explained that our mere presence would be an example and encouragement to others. Looking back I can say now that we didn’t fully understand the importance of what Pastor Mark was communicating at the time. I’m able to look back now and see that we were making our comfort and convenience more of a priority than church. By staying home, we were communicating to everyone around us that our comfort was more important than being there with them. When you’re tired or having a hard time with little ones and you still come to church, you are communicating to everyone how worth it it is. You’re letting everyone know that it’s worth being faithful to not neglect to meet together and to stir up one another to love and good works. When we see parents that have spouses that are sick or having to work and yet they are still faithful in bringing their kids to church, it is such an encouragement to us.
Our time is limited here on Earth and we long to be at home with the Lord. As we look forward to that day, let’s be faithful in doing what God has called us to. Pray asking God to help you love his bride more. These are the people that you’ll be worshiping side-by-side with for an eternity. So many aspects of our life fight against our desire to prioritize church, but it’s crucial for our growth as followers of Christ. Our being there is not only crucial for our growth but also for the growth of our children and other brothers and sisters in the church. Lean on God and reevalu ate your priorities for the sake of your family and the brethren. It is so worth it.