Why Do We Need To Go To Church Twice?

Rev. Allan Quak. Trowel & Sword. September 1999

Preamble: Our world is changing; our world has changed. The same is true of the Church – our Church. A mere 25 years ago Rev. Allan Quack wrote passionately about the need for believers to attend church twice on Sundays. Today, in most churches, this is no longer even possible as the second service in many cases has passed into history; gone the way of the dodo. There could be a number of reasons for this: Perhaps attendance dropping so low Sessions deemed it no longer viable to conduct second services; perhaps ministers struggling with the task of preparing two sermons each week let alone one; or perhaps some churches simply got out of the habit following the Covid lockdowns. This article by Allan Quack may be the stimulus we need to reverse the trend of fewer services in our churches. If not, and the trend continues it may not be too long before some, or many churches close their doors for good.

Why Do We Need To Go To Church Twice?

It’s a question many children ask their parents and when we consider most churches have a high percentage of people who do not come to the evening service, it seems to be a question many parents are asking themselves.

Many reasons have been given to Session members for not coming to the second service, yet a common thread which seems to tie the reasons together is busyness. Our weeks are too busy to catch up with relatives which means Sunday is the only day we have. Work commitments make family life impossible during the week making Sunday the only day where we are not too busy to spend time together. The morning service wasn’t really that great so we use the rest of the day to be busy doing something else that feels more productive and exciting.

Perhaps here lies the problem. In this world of busyness our motto for life has become, “Don’t just stand there… do something”. We must produce, we must be active, we have to see results – and we have a tendency to apply these same criteria to worship. If worship falls short of the standard once on the Sunday what incentive do we have for coming twice?

The burden of this article is to encourage us to approach Sunday with a different motto. We need to move from being “don’t just stand there but do something” type people, to “don’t just do something but stand there” type people.

Let me propose a principle.

When you don’t know how to stop you’re headed for disaster. It’s a principle which applies to many areas of life but especially in your spiritual life. All of us need a spiritual time out. We know it. God knows it even more for, “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done” (Gen.2:3).

God also knows we have a tendency to side-step the opportunities He gives to have rest, that is why, in the fourth commandment, we read, “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you” (Dt.5:12). Stopping and standing in the presence of God is good and necessary. Even Jesus modelled this principle. In Luke 4:16 we read, “On the Sabbath Day Jesus went into the synagogue, as was His custom…!” Maybe these words don’t seem so significant just yet but let’s think about the implications of them for a moment. As Jesus makes His way to the synagogue, try and picture His circumstances. It’s still fairly early in His ministry. In Luke 3:21-22 we read of Jesus’ baptism, which begins His formal ministry. Jesus knows He has been set apart by God to preach, teach, heal and restore. Jesus knows He has about three and a half years to make His way around the people of Israel with the message of the kingdom. Jesus knows that Satan is going to do his best to hinder the progress of the Gospel. Basically, as Jesus walks towards the synagogue, He has a full and busy agenda. If anyone had reason to justify not coming to the synagogue it was Jesus. He could easily have thought, “I’m too busy for this, there are more important things to do”.

But He doesn’t, instead He goes to the synagogue even though He knows He is going to be rejected. Now in this context we could say Jesus went to the synagogue because He was going to preach and, on this occasion, that is true. However the words “as was His custom” do not apply to the reading and preaching, they apply to the action of going to the synagogue – and all synagogues had morning and evening services (cf. Ps.92, especially the title and the first three verses). Jesus wouldn’t miss worship. In fact Jesus had this attitude right through His ministry.

Make the effort some time to read the latter portions of all the Gospels, especially the portions which deal with the last week before Jesus went to the cross. As you are reading see if you can find out what Jesus was doing on the Sabbath before He died. It may seem hard to believe but, in all four Gospels, you will not find one reference to Jesus doing anything on the Sabbath before He died. Admittedly it is an argument from silence but it does give weight to the consistency of Jesus’ attitude to worship. With the busiest week of His life ahead of Him it seems that Jesus had a very quiet Sabbath Day. In six days the salvation of God’s people would be placed on His shoulders as He bears the curse of the cross, yet it seems Jesus thought worship was more important than work. If Jesus took the time during the busiest week of His life to stop and just stand in God’s presence should we be tempted to think we can do any less?

Life is busy and has many demands. Work, sport, family, leisure, study, personal time, gardening, maintenance, church activities, special occasions – all these and much more are putting up their hand to claim a piece of our time.

And then comes Sunday.

During corporate worship we have a chance to sing praises, to be assured of our salvation, to hear God’s Word faithfully being preached and to communicate with our God. We are given the opportunity to encourage members who we haven’t seen for a while, and make a note to visit those who are not present. We fellowship as those who have one Lord, one hope, one faith. We stop and stand in God’s presence.

Corporate worship is able to give us so much yet, too often, we see Sunday as a catch-up day, or a convenient day to visit relatives and give the children quality time, or a great day to keep going with unfinished tasks. In other words we can have a tendency to see Sunday as a day to keep busy rather than a special opportunity to stop and worship and be spiritually refreshed. If this is an attitude you have developed remember there is no beatitude that says, “Blessed are the busy”. But there is a text in Hebrews 10:25 which says: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the day approaching.”

And that is exactly what Jesus was doing. By the time you have gotten to this point I would hope that you are becoming convinced of the importance of worship both in the morning and in the evening. But, if you need further encouragement let your focus come back to Jesus whose custom it was to go to the synagogue.

Just picture Jesus sitting in the synagogue looking around at the people who are there. What kind of people are they? When we look at other parts of Scripture we see that the synagogue worshippers were quite a mixed crowd. Jesus mentions some of them later in His ministry. In Matt.23:6 Jesus speaks about teachers of the law who love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogue. In Matt.6:2 Jesus calls us to be righteous without making a big fuss as the hypocrites do in the synagogues.

And the leader of the synagogue would not be a man well known for his eloquent teaching and charismatic personality – all of those people went to Jerusalem. It’s hardly a situation which sparks the spiritual imagination is it? Such circumstances could have allowed Jesus to have a negative attitude to worship. Wouldn’t Jesus be justified in thinking: “Why am I bothering to come? I’m tired of seeing leaders who are not thinking of the needs of the people but only about themselves. I’m tired of people who are nothing more than religious. They are just going through the motions but being far from God. And the man who stands up the front…? Well, I know much more than He does. He never teaches anything new. He’s not really that inspiring.” Jesus may have been justified to have these thoughts, but He never did – He continued to make it His custom to worship.

Perhaps we are not so keen on worship because of the type of people who gather there – people who turn us off. Perhaps we know of people who wear a “butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth” expression to church but who are hard employees or employers during the week. Maybe we feel people only take interest in us on Sunday because we happen to see them – but we never hear from them during the week. There have been times when we have stood on the edge of a circle but not gone further because we don’t fit into the clique.

At this point it is tempting to think, “Well, if that the sort of people we meet at church we might as well stay home”. However, at this point, we are given positive encouragement by the example of Jesus. Jesus could have concluded that He was better off staying home, but Jesus never did because the primary purpose of worship is not to meet one another (although this is a great benefit of corporate worship). Instead the primary purpose of worship is to come and meet God. Who is the God we come to worship? He never leaves us sitting on the edge of the crowd with His back to us. He is delighted that we have come to worship and He is disappointed when we are missing. God is the One who is saying to us during worship and through worship, “You don’t have to do anything except stand in My presence – let Me refresh you as you stop”

Are you convinced now that coming to worship twice should be a priority? Perhaps you’re still hesitating because you’re not happy with the style of service at your church. You have heard about the powerful singing at the Church of Christ and you find that missing in your own church. On a couple of occasions you have been to one of the weekly youth services at the local Presbyterian church and you wish your home church be more like that. You sometimes visit the church in town because they only sing the traditional hymns rather than the modern tunes, which are used at your church. Much could be said about this – a discussion on styles of worship is usually an emotive, passionate and personal subject. I just want to say that, if you look long and hard enough, someone will always be doing something different. If we focus on what is not happening at church, or how we would like it to be, we will always be disappointed. That principle applies when change isn’t quick enough – the principle also applies when the traditions of yesteryear are gone.

Let’s put our attention back on Jesus. He too must have had times when coming to the synagogue was a real disappointment. In the synagogue God was to be worshipped and the Word of God was to be explained. Of all people Jesus had experienced the fullness of worship. Jesus had seen the times when the 24 elders would gather around the throne of His Father and bow down to give the purest worship possible. Jesus had witnessed angels, hundreds, thousands, millions all harmoniously giving praise to God. How insignificant the worship of the synagogue must have seemed. People distracted. People not singing. People worshipping with their mouths but not their hearts. And how the leading of the service and reverence for the Word must have seemed to be a poor imitation of seeing the Father face to face. Knowing all His attributes. Knowing intimately His plan of salvation. Knowing the place of every person in that plan.

But despite the potential disappointment Jesus went to the synagogue as was His custom. He wasn’t there because the worship was overly inspiring and because the leader of the synagogue was a charismatic man. He worshipped because God promises to be with Jesus when Jesus sets aside this day to just stop and stand in God’s presence.

This promise of God is not just for Jesus, it is for all of us. God, who created us, knows how important it is for us to stop and stand in His presence. God provides for His people that they may be refreshed. Even when the Israelites were crossing the desert God made sure His people were given extra food on Friday so that they could be properly prepared for the Sabbath (cf. Ex.16:21-30). The Israelites knew the importance of stopping and standing in God’s presence. Jesus, who is divine, continues to model the need to stop from a busy schedule, and stand in awe of God. Can we, who have been privileged to know the fullness of salvation, justify doing anything less?

‘On the Sabbath Day Jesus went into the synagogue, as was His custom’. There are only two others things Jesus did out of custom: It was His custom to teach the crowds. Telling them about the kingdom of God and the blessing of renewal which God wants to give to His people (cf. Mk.10:1). And it was His custom to find solitary places to pray. Telling His Father all that was on His heart and asking His Father to walk with Him in His ministry (cf. Lk.22:39).

Teaching. Praying. Going to the synagogue. Only these three things were a custom for Jesus. They were given priority. He relished these times.

As we see Jesus sitting in the synagogue we are struck with an amazing truth. Of all people, Jesus has the most valid reasons not to take the opportunity to worship. He has the divine power to keep going. He has seen worship in its fullness. He is the greatest teacher there ever was. He is busy beyond our understanding. Jesus has every reason to be somewhere else, but He goes to the synagogue because He wants to be there. Worship was His custom. He would organise His week to be there, He even took time out from saving people from eternal wrath to be in corporate worship.

Why did Jesus have this attitude? It’s because it was an opportunity – a God-given opportunity – to stop. A time, not to do things, but to just stand in the presence of God and be refreshed. A time to have that rest which God built into creation right from the beginning. A time to listen to God rather than being too busy to shut God off. No excuses are offered. Jesus sees this as a non-negotiable response of faith. If that was the case for Jesus how much more should it be the case for us?

Allan Quak

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