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

Years ago, I was preparing to teach a Wednesday night Bible study when a saint approached me with a confession. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here last Wednesday night, pastor. My friend is dying so I thought it was more important for me to spend some time with her while I could.” Ever since that conversation I’ve been waiting to write a book like this so I could help people see how wrong it is to miss church for any reason. God forbid! In truth, I told that precious saint she didn’t need to apologize or feel guilty because that Wednesday night she was exactly where she should have been. Because not all non-attendance is created equal. 

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that I’ve said non-attendance is sometimes a sin. That word sometimes is crucial. Yes, there is a very real problem of non-attendance among professing Christians. But we can easily swing the pendulum to a legalistic approach to church attendance that demands full participation every time the church doors are open. The truth is, there are occasions when missing church is not only permissible but right. 

But for now, I hope you understand my burden in writing this book. No, non-attendance is not always sinful, but sometimes it is. Sometimes in their absence believers commit a legion of sins of omission as they neglect their responsibilities to church leaders, forsake their responsibilities as church members, fail to regularly take the Lord’s Supper, and overlook their responsibilities to the “one another” in their local church. The greater danger with non-attendance is not what we do, but what we leave undone.

Before we leave this topic behind, let’s be clear about one thing. Attending doesn’t automatically make you faithful in any of the areas above. You can have perfect attendance and be divisive and unsubmissive to your pastor. You can show up every time the doors are open and fail to guard the what and who of the gospel. You can take the Lord’s Supper whenever your church partakes it and yet do it in an unworthy manner. You can never miss a Sunday and still never obey a “one another” command. Just showing up isn’t enough. 

But showing up still matters. So much that I’ve devoted this entire book to defending the importance of faithfully gathering with God’s people. But what do we mean by faithfully gathering? How often does one need to be absent to be guilty of the sin of non-attendance? To answer these questions, we’ll need to carefully define the sin of non-attendance.