The Church: Essential to Our Endurance
August 29th, 2022 • by Jenilyn Swett
I’ve heard it said that absence makes the heart grow fonder. While this certainly proves true in some cases, in the past few years I’ve discovered that when it comes to the church body, absence has clarified necessity.
Part of the Body
I was born into a wonderful church. The faithful men and women there came alongside my parents to help raise me and teach me about Jesus. They gave me opportunities to learn, serve, and lead, showing me what it meant to be a part of a body (1 Cor. 12:12-31). They modeled kindness, love, and faithfulness in various seasons of life including marriage, widowhood, and lifelong singleness. They prayed for me and the other children of the church long into our adulthoods. With our extended family living far away, church truly was our local family. Of course, it was an imperfect church, but it was earnestly seeking to be what God intends the church to be..
College was an in-between time for me—a season in which church was merely a part of my Sunday schedule. Looking back, I can see that I missed opportunities to serve, grow, and be cared for by the local church I attended. Fortunately, once I graduated and moved to a new city, God led my roommates and I to a church that would be my home until I moved away four years later.
When I moved to St. Louis, once again God quickly—though somewhat unexpectedly—brought me to a church that has now been my home for thirteen years (and my workplace for nine). This church has been especially significant for me as my years of singleness have stretched on in spite of my longing for a spouse and children. Each member of our church brings a different story to the table, but over the years I’ve found that we have much more in common than meets the eye. We all bear God’s image in beautiful ways. We all fumble and falter in efforts to follow Jesus. We all experience insecurity, disappointment, grief, and loneliness. We all long to be seen, known, and loved—we long for true community. And as members of his body, we are all deeply loved by Jesus (Ephesians 5:25-30).
These brothers and sisters whose lives have been woven into mine have encouraged me, prayed for me, welcomed me to their tables, and adopted me as “auntie” to their kids. We’ve lived through high highs and low lows together, prayed for God’s provision and lifted up our longings and laments to him, pointed one another back to Jesus and the good news of the gospel time and again, and seen God at work in many ways.
Church has always been part of my life, part of my week, and often part of my work. So to a large extent I’ve always made it a priority. But it’s taken a pandemic and a sabbatical to reveal to me that church is not just important, it is essential to faithfully following Jesus.
Essential Embodiment
I will never forget how it felt to pull into our nearly-empty church parking lot on that Sunday morning in mid-March, 2020. Just two days before, we’d made the decision to suspend in-person gatherings due to the pandemic, and I was part of a small team of staff and volunteers who would lead our livestream service. Our church building was much too quiet. It felt so wrong, and the future felt so uncertain. I wept as we prayed for our church family that morning.
Over the next weeks and months before we returned to in-person services, I became keenly aware of all the things I missed about gathering together for worship. I missed handshakes, hugs, and even sitting close enough to someone to share a laugh or give a playful nudge (2 Cor. 13:12). I missed hearing a room full of voices raised in song, responding in our liturgy, or reciting the Apostles’ Creed (Col. 3:16). I missed passing the bread and the wine, partaking of communion and tasting the goodness of God together (Ps. 34:8). I missed holding babies and laughing at the chaos of our kiddos. I even missed the casual chit-chat with newcomers and regulars before and after the service.
“ My physical body needed this weekly experience of embodied worship with Christ’s body, the church. ”
Even though it was out of necessity for the safety of our community, having these aspects of worship taken away made it clear just how integral each one was to our weekly gathering and our pursuit of faithfulness. This pursuit is fueled by the gospel, which we were reminded of each Sunday as we confessed our sin, heard an assurance of God’s forgiveness, and learned from God’s Word. But I also needed to hear other voices singing and proclaiming truth when mine wasn’t strong enough, to taste the bread and wine to remind me that Jesus’s love is real, to reach out and hug a grieving sister. My physical body needed this weekly experience of embodied worship with Christ’s body, the church.
Essential Family
By the fall of 2021, life at church had settled into some semblance of normalcy. Most of the things we’d missed during the height of the pandemic had returned along with a quiet gratitude for that which we had once taken for granted. My church sent me off on a three-month sabbatical, a time for rest and refreshment after several years of serving on staff. In order to rest well I didn’t attend worship services at my church during that time.
As I visited other churches, I appreciated getting to worship alongside friends, experiencing a variety of service styles, and having a break from responsibilities. But most Sundays I found myself aching with homesickness, longing to be back with my church family. I felt lonely without my people.
Being away made it clear to me that church is so much more than the various elements of a worship service. Being part of the body of Christ is about being known and knowing others. It’s worshiping, learning, growing, and serving. It’s knowing and witnessing the stories of one another’s lives, and how God is at work in them. It’s watching kids grow up and watching one another grow in maturity in Christ (Eph. 4:1-16). It’s weeping and rejoicing together, because the joy or sorrow of any part of the body is shared by the whole. It’s making and keeping promises, loving sacrificially, and being loved by others (Rom. 12:1-18). The absence of my particular church family clarified the necessity of it.
“We are essential to one another’s lives as disciples of Jesus. ”
Homesick
Perhaps you’ve felt the ache of homesickness for your church family too. Maybe health concerns have prevented you from attending in-person gatherings. Maybe you’ve left a church, whether because of a move, a life change, or a conflict. Maybe church has become a painful place for you, and you’ve kept your distance. If you’re feeling this kind of homesickness or heartache related to the church, I hope you have wise and trusted friends walking and praying with you through this season.
Or perhaps you haven’t yet found a church community that feels like family. This can take time, discernment, relational effort, and even some risk. It is not always easy, but it is worth it. We’re not meant to follow Jesus alone.
Enduring Together
God granted us the gift of one another, knowing that it would be essential for the long haul of faithfulness (Gal. 6:9-10). We are essential to one another’s endurance in singleness, in marriage, in parenting, in caregiving, in work, in discernment, in loss, in waiting, in doing justly and loving mercy. We are essential to one another’s lives as disciples of Jesus. It is together, not independently, that we can “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” And because the Almighty is faithful, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another…” (Heb. 10:23-25).
If you’re part of a healthy church, remember that worship is something we do with our whole bodies, so showing up matters. And don’t take for granted how much your presence, your voice, your story, and your gifts matter to those around you. The faces I see, the voices I hear, and the stories they carry spur me on towards faithfulness each and every week. I pray that mine do the same for them.
In a church family, we get to be present embodiments of the Almighty’s love and provision for one another. So as we gather together for worship, may we point each other back to Jesus and encourage one another to keep going as we run (or walk, or stumble) towards him in the race God has set before us (Heb. 12:1-3).
This article was adapted in part from this post on Jenilyn’s website.
Jenilyn Swett received her MDiv from Covenant Theological Seminary and serves as the Director of Adult Ministries at Restoration Community Church (PCA) in St. Louis, MO. She is the author of the devotional Singleness: Living Faithfully. Jenilyn enjoys practicing creative hospitality, exploring local restaurants, baking, and dreaming of the beach. You can find her on Instagram.
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