Recently, I attended one of the most impactful church gatherings I have ever had the pleasure to be part of. It took place on September 10th, 2023 at North Shuswap Christian Fellowship in Scotch Creek, BC. This service took place after several weeks of the community being evacuated due to wildfire, and this was the first time the church had gathered again in person, in the North Shuswap community.
The service was shorter than usual, but that was very much by design. We opened with a reading of Psalm 100 which includes these words, Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. We sang songs proclaiming God’s goodness and faithfulness.
The message likewise focused on a beautiful truth of the gospel. The fact that nothing in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Even though God’s people may have been temporarily separated and displaced, we were never at any point separated from the love of Jesus Christ.
These elements of the gathering were intentionally kept brief so that there would be time for God’s people to reconnect, to share a hug and tell the story of all that happened in the previous weeks. There was such a palpable joy in that fellowship that I haven’t seen before or since. A joy of lives having been saved through immense danger, chaos and displacement. Some had lost many material possessions, nearly everything, yet nevertheless expressed a deep joy at being reunited.
As I have thought about that exceptional gathering and what made it so special, I came to this realization: This is what joyful fellowship as followers of Christ is meant to look like. Genuine fellowship is the joy of a people who have been saved from a far greater danger than that of fire. Fellowship is sharing an almost inexpressible joy that comes from being saved from the powers of sin and death. The sweetness of our gathering is as those who were as good as dead because of sin, yet whose lives have been saved because of grace.
Though the fig tree should not blossom, not fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Habakkuk 3:17-18
We all have a tendency to treat our gathering together as the church as something routine; it is routine in that our gathering is at a regularly scheduled time on the same day every week. But we must not fall into the trap of confusing a routine meeting with a routine message. Our meeting is routine, but our message is anything but. The message of being saved by grace through faith is extraordinary. The danger we were in before knowing Christ is far more dangerous than the danger of fire, it was one of being spiritually dead!
Take a moment to close your eyes and imagine what a gathering of people who were dead but who have been brought to life by God would look like. Now open your eyes and look at the church! This is exactly what the church gathering is. We were dead but through faith in Christ, God has caused us to be born again to living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
May God by His indwelling Spirit give us the vision to see the gathering the way that He sees it, and to rejoice the way He rejoices in God’s good work.
Pastor Scott