008 | The Purpose of the Gathering

If we can have church online, why should we gather? Is church the worship music andthe sermon? If so, we can easily “go” to many churches all across the United States and beyond. Yet many of us may be sensing that something is missing. This has caused me to ask myself, “what is the purpose of gathering?” Philip Jenkins comments on how this crisis will affect the church by thinking through the idea of secularization,“Do recall that secularization does not necessarily mean a decline or destruction of faith or belief as such. Rather it means a decline of religious institutions, and a decisive shift in religious practice to individual and privatized forms. It means the loss of belonging, not necessarily believing – although in the long run, it is very difficult to maintain the one in the absence of the other.”The crisis has not caused the thinking that faith is private, it has simply enabled it. This is was what John Stonestreet called a “preexisting condition” of the church before Covid-19. In order to shift back to the values of believing and belonging, we must recapture the purpose of gathering.