Dr Paul Allen

In the last several years, observers of the western church life have noted that the definition of a regular church attendee is changing. With increasing affluence, mobility, commitments, and entertainment options, many Christians gather with their church family less often than they did ten years ago. Previously, a regular church attendee was a person who “only” gathered with their church one time a week. Now a regular attendee is a person who may attend twice a month. We often don’t think about what happens when we don’t regularly gather with our church. Sure, we may think about what I might miss. “I won’t hear the sermon today, but I can read a book, listen to Christian radio, or catch up on the podcast.” “I love to sing worship music, but I can do that in the car on the way to where I am going today. I don’t have to go to a building to sing praises to Jesus.” We make these excuses to ourselves and use them to justify how I can make up for what I am missing when I miss gathering wi...

Is church attendance, if you're physically able, a requirement to go to heaven? In a very technical sense, the answer is no. However, we need to remember a few things. Christ commands His people not to forsake the assembling together (Heb. 10:25). When God constituted the people of Israel, He organized them into a visible nation and placed upon them a sober and sacred obligation to be in corporate worship before Him. If a person is in Christ, he is called to participate in koinonia—the fellowship of other Christians and the worship of God according to the precepts of Christ. If a person knows all these things and persistently and willfully refuses to join in them, would that not raise serious questions about the reality of that person's conversion? Perhaps a person could be a new Christian and take that position, but I would say that's highly unlikely. Some of us may be deceiving ourselves in terms of our own conversion. We may claim to be Christians, but if we love ...

Sunday Morning (Photo credit: jspaw ) Let's talk about church members who attend their home church with great irregularity. These aren’t unchurched folks, or de- churched , or under-churched. They are semi-churched. They show up some of the time, but not every week. They are on again/off again, in and out, here on Sunday and gone for two. That’s the scandal of the semi-churched. In fact, Thom Rainer argues that the number one reason for the decline in church attendance is that church members don’t go to church as often as they used to. We’ve had Christmas and Easter Christians for probably as long as we’ve had Christmas and Easter. Some people will always be intermittent with their church attendance. We're not talking about nominal Christians who wander into church once or twice a year. We're talking about people who went through the trouble of joining a church, have no particular beef with the church, and still only darken its doors once or twice a month. If ther...

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553): Adam and Eve. Beech wood, 1533. Bode-Museum, Berlin (Erworben 1830, Königliche Schlösser, Gemäldegalerie Kat. 567) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) This question is answered definitively in Hebrews 10:25. “Let us not… [forsake] the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but [exhort] one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” This verse requires more than regularly attending worship services, but it doesn’t require less. Believers go to church. The writer says that church attendance is more important today than it was yesterday! Both Catholics and historic Protestants have maintained that outside of the church there is no salvation. While allowing for exceptions, as a rule the only place God promises to save is in the church (Matt. 16:18-19). No one may claim to be united to the head of the church who disregards the body. Believers understand that salvation is never merely a personal experience. The fall...