The Importance of Corporate Worship

COVID presented us with our lives forever changed in one way or another.  There is no more true than when it comes to the church.  For the first time in our lifetime, church doors were closed and worship services were canceled for weeks.  I can still hear Joey Hall saying the first Sunday back "I didn't realize how important coming to worship regularly was and how much I missed it."

This brings me to this question, Is corporate worship all that important?  All of our life is worship to God as Paul said in Roamns 12: 2 "...present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is your spiritual worship." So is worship with the gathered family of God important? necessary?

In Genesis 4: 26 after Cain's offering was rejected and Abel's offering accepted, it says "At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord."  We don't know the regulation of that in a corporate way, but there was certainly a group of people together "calling on the name of the Lord."

From Exodus 20 where God gives special instructions to gather on the seventh day of the week under the old covenant to moving to the first day of the week under the new covenant (John 20:19; Acts 20:7; I Corinthians 16:2; Revelation1:10) to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ; God's people have gathered regularly, systematically, to worship.

In this context, we hear the Word of God read and preached, we pray as one, we sing, and we celebrate the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper together.  

There is no substitute for a pattern of corporate worship. No wonder Hebrews 10:25 challenges us not to "neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."