This Sunday we continue our series on The Alpha Omega Factor as we look at Hebrews 10:19-25 and think about “Reasons I Need to Go to Church.” Actually, the Bible calls us to be the church, and not just go to church. But to effectively be the church, we need to faithfully gather with the other members of the body of Christ for equipping and encouragement.
Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth President of the United States, believed in attending and participating in church. In 1917, in an interview with Ladies Home Journal, President Roosevelt offered at least ten reasons for going to church:
1. In the actual world a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid downgrade.
2. Church work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the habit of feeling some responsibility for others and the sense of braced moral strength which prevents a relaxation of one’s own moral fiber.
3. There are enough holidays for most of us which can quite properly be devoted to pure holiday making... Sundays differ from other holidays--among other ways--in the fact that there are fifty-two of them every year... On Sunday, go to church.
4. Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator and dedicate oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in one’s own house, just as well as in church. But I also know as a matter of cold fact the average man does not thus worship or thus dedicate himself. If he strays away from church he does not spend his time in good works or lofty meditation. He looks over the colored supplement of the newspaper.
5. He may not hear a good sermon at church. But unless he is very unfortunate he will hear a sermon by a good man who, with his good wife, is engaged all the week long in a series of wearing, humdrum and important tasks for making hard lives a little easier.
6. He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible, he has suffered a loss.
7. He will probably take part in singing some good hymns.
8. He will meet and nod to, or speak to, good quiet, neighbors... He will come away feeling a little more charitably toward all the world, even toward those excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as rather a soft performance.
9. I advocate a man’s joining in church works for the sake of showing his faith by his works.
10. The man who does not in some way, active or not, connect himself with some active, working church misses many opportunities for helping his neighbors, and therefore, incidentally, for helping himself.
Eighty four years have passed since that historic interview with President Roosevelt. And church attendance and participation is still vitally important to faith development and Christian service. The scriptures advise us “not to give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, even more as you see the day of the Lord approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25)
I am counting on seeing you this Sunday as we gather for worship and Bible study.
