It's Sunday morning, and Mother Nature has shut down the city. The roads are closed. Nobody is going anywhere. Some Christians shout joyfully, "Yeah, we get a week off from church!" Others recall COVID pandemic training and prepare to watch a live stream of something and "gather" on the web of the world's internet. Some mourn the lost opportunity to gather with the saints (Hebrews 10:25). Some prepare for worship alone or with the family at home.
A transformed life is a life of worship (Romans 12:1-2), and the Bible talks about worship in a couple of different ways. There's individual worship (sometimes called personal or secret worship), which we see when Jesus retreats to pray alone. David, Daniel, and Peter model it. It's private prayer and private giving. It's the way we work for our employer. It's private Bible study, devotion, and our quiet times with God. It's enjoying God's creation and marveling at all God has done. It's repentance and growing still. There's also an aspect of worship that's public or corporate (from the word corpus meaning body). This worship is a collective encounter or experience with God as God's people. Some include family worship as another expression of public worship, as seen in Exodus 12:3 and directed by Deuteronomy 6:6-7.
A snow day (or natural disaster, sickness, war, or persecution) affords Christians another opportunity to question what it means to gather with other believers for public worship. What is corporate worship? Where does it happen? Why gather with other believers? Why on the Lord's Day, and what is that (Revelation 1:10)? What is necessary for a worship gathering, and what makes it worship? What's the difference between a worship experience in the gathering of believers and an event on the stage or screen? Where and how is the Holy Spirit involved in Christ's Church?
To start, one might appeal to Matthew 18:20, which says, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." The "for" tells us that this statement is giving us the anchor for something that came before and that something is church discipline. This passage is Jesus' guidance to help the local church determine when an unrepentant sinner has reached the point when the local church should no longer affirm that person as a Christian. This passage is undoubtedly instructive for the gathering of believers, but maybe not in the way most think about it when taken out of context.
Ephesians 5:15-21 instructs Christians on relating to one another as fellow children of Light. It says Christians should address "one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another our of reverence for Christ." While the passage is not restricted to a Lord's Day worship service, it certainly includes that time when Christians are together. Christians should sing together, but when they do, they sing to God. They join the choir and praise the Lord, much like we see modeled by the angels in the heavenly realm. Our worship includes singing and giving thanks together.
1 Timothy 4:13 instructs a young pastor on the gathering of Christians, encouraging Timothy to "devote [himself] to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching." When Christians gather, Scripture should be read publicly (out loud with others), and preaching should include both exhortation and teaching.
Prayer is an integral part of the public gathering. Acts 2:42 says, "They devoted themselves to the apostle's teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers." 1 Timothy 2 instructs Christians to pray, and the context is corporate. These prayers were likely part of their worship gatherings because the instruction shifted to teaching and how women and men relate in these gatherings. It's reasonable that James 5:13-16 includes the context of a corporate gathering of Christians, too, and the call is to pray.
The breaking of bread, or the Lord's Supper, is also a part of the worship gathering. The Lord's Day gathering during the early Church was in the evening, possibly because, in the Hebrew tradition, the day started at sunset. In Acts 20:7, Luke writes, "On the first day of the week, when we gathered together to break bread." Paul preached, and the verse says that he went on until midnight. It's doubtful that it started in the morning. As an evening gathering, it included a meal based on Jude 1:12 and 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. These meals included taking the Lord's Supper together in remembrance of Jesus.
1 Corinthians 14:26-40 instructs that the gathering should be orderly and not a wild free-for-all. Hebrews 12:28 says it should be reverent and filled with awe as we give God our acceptable worship.
John seems to have been alone on the Lord's Day. Can there be Lord's Day worship without a gathering of other believers? What was his Lord's Day worship for him? Could John have believed there was some connection while engaging in private worship while others were in public worship? Revelation 1:10 says he was "in the Spirit on the Lord's Day," which may be connected to John 4:24 when Jesus said, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." What does it mean that he was worshiping in spirit and truth? (I'll leave that to you to consider, although another post may be coming on this topic.)
So now you find yourself snowed in. How will you respond?
Here's a simple guide for family worship without a live stream to join:
Gather your family around the family room or dining room table.
Have someone open with a prayer. You could each take turns if you desire.
Select a passage of Scripture to read together. Have someone read it out loud.
Sing a psalm, hymn, or spiritual song (or songs) together. If that's a stretch, select some worshipful music and listen to it together or sing along. You could have someone read the words of a Psalm. You could also read a good hymn out loud (these are easy to find if you have the internet, or you could keep a hymnal on the shelf for these opportunities).
Have someone read a passage of Scripture (it could be the same one you opened with) and discuss it. If this is something you are uncomfortable with, trust that God will help. Pray and see if the Spirit might bring even one exhortation forward. Even if you can't teach it, there may be something the Text calls upon your family. Do you see it? If you have a Bible study bookmark on hand, walk through that for a few minutes.
Pray again together. If you'd like, sing another song. You could be finished here, or each person could share something God has been doing in his or her life lately. You could rehurse the goodness of the gospel. Or you could pray more specifically for each person. It's really up to you.
Corporate worship doesn't have to be in a big room with lots of people, lights down, with a well-planned something on the stage. It may not include musical instruments or a trained preacher at all. These things can significantly help bring corporate worship together, but they are not the guaranteed ingredients. Seek to worship our Triune God, through his power, for his glory and see what happens. This snow day might be more edifying than you imagined when you first looked out the window.
