The Sin of Non-Attendance

[The following is excerpted from the book, Gather: Getting to the Heart of Going to Church, Copyright © 2021 by M. Hopson Boutot.]

This is a book about going to church. Thanks in part to my loving Christian parents I’ve been faithfully going to church almost every week for nearly four decades. For my family and many others, going to church is kind of like second nature. It’s not something we ever have to make time for in our weekly calendar. It’s a given. 

But even as church attendance was largely a given in my home growing up, the same is not true for countless Christians. I’ve encountered many well-meaning Christians for whom attending church is worth doing only when all the circumstances are aligned just right. Too many Christians have never considered that their non-attendance just might be wrong. That it sometimes might be a sin to not attend church.

So this is also a book about sin. It’s not about sin in general. It’s a book about a particular sin, namely the sin of non-attendance. Perhaps that one’s new to you. You’re familiar with the classics like pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. What’s the sin of non-attendance?

The sin of non-attendance is a believer’s willful and continual absence from regular corporate gatherings in a local church. I promise to unpack this definition in greater detail later, but for now consider just one passage that speaks to this sin:

Hebrews 10:23-25—Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And 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, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

Whether or not you agree with my definition (although I hope you will by the time you’re done with this book), I hope you at least agree there is such a thing as the sin of non-attendance. We may quibble over how serious the sin is, how many absences qualify, or how we should respond to this sin. I hope to address each of those concerns later. But for now, I hope we at least agree there is such a thing as “neglecting to meet together,” and that such neglect is disobedience to Scripture. In other words, it is sin. 

But wouldn’t it be better to approach this sin differently? If you’re trying to encourage people to faithfully attend church, wouldn’t it be better to be more positive? Shouldn’t we motivate them with delight, not duty? With grace, not guilt? I agree. But this book’s primary audience isn’t the wayward church member. 

In nearly ten years as a senior pastor, I’ve spent my fair share of time pursuing wayward church members. It comes with the territory. But if you can’t get a member to faithfully attend worship services at your church, you’re probably not going to get him or her to read a book about the sin of non-attendance. No, this book isn’t primarily meant for the non-attender (that said, if you are struggling in this area, I hope you’ll keep reading). 

This book’s primary audience is the faithful (or semi-faithful) church attender who doesn’t fully understand why showing up matters. To him or her, faithful church attendance is like one of the options in the buffet. It’s great if you like that sort of thing but it shouldn’t be forced on everybody. After all, everybody has their own tastes and preferences. 

In these pages I hope to get to the heart of why church attendance matters. And if you love your church, you should desire its membership to be marked by faithfulness. You shouldn’t view faithful attendance as one of the options at the buffet line, but the entire buffet. Faithful attendance isn’t one approach to membership, its part and parcel to what membership is. Showing up matters.