There is no such thing as a perfect “church meeting.” Whenever we come together, we may try to create a program with no hiccups, a plan to prevent problems, or a structure to keep order. But isn’t this effort tiring? Yes, we do need to prepare. But perhaps more importantly, we should first ask ourselves: Is our meeting alive? Are we alive?
Indeed, it is biblical for the whole church to come together in one place (1 Cor. 14:23-26). But we are not called to execute a format or a robotic duty. The church is the living body of Christ — and so our coming together should be very human, very organic, very warm. Wouldn’t it feel wrong to grab hold of someone’s hand, only to find it is as cold as death? In the same way, what do people find when they come into our midst, into our meetings? Do they find a warm-blooded, living being? A very tangible and very human expression of the Lord Himself on the earth today? Or something cold, impersonal, distant? Our own salvation didn’t come from an outward format — it came from a true engagement. For many of us, it was a saint who came to us with a sensitivity to our needs, a mysterious human intuition to know, “This person is ready to be saved!”
If we care about the outward matters yet our beings are dead, we are serving the wrong thing. In 1 Corinthians, Paul says, “When therefore you come together in the same place, it is not to eat the Lord’s supper; For in your eating, each one takes his own supper first, and one is hungry and the other is drunk” (11:21). Before we serve any need, we should ask ourselves: Of whose supper are we partaking? And what is being served? We are not serving a physical place or a table arrangement, but people. Our coming together should be organic, to care for the life in front of us. Can we be like Paul who could be anything to anyone that they may be saved (9:22)? Can we be that flexible, that alive, that vital, that sensitive?
The church offers salvation to all those who are truly seeking. It is not a closed, gated, or exclusive community, but one which can really reach man, not through an outward service, but a service of humanity. There’s a real need in the world today, and people are searching for something true, something worthy. When people come to the meeting, let them be satisfied (Matt. 11:28), let them be joyful (Phil. 4:4), let them come and see something that they have never seen before (John 4:29), let them truly say Christ is in our midst (1 Cor. 14:25)!
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 1/19/2025, not reviewed by the speaker.)