And so, dear brothers and sisters] we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. 20 By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. 21 And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, 22 let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.

23 Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. 24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. 25 And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. (NLT).

The call is to everyone in the church to, in a very real sense, pastor the church. It is not just for leaders to encourage the members of the church in good behaviour. This is a ministry entrusted to every believer. But how can we meaningfully participate in this if we’re not there (or not there all that often)?

‘So, then, we are to come to worship God – not just in private, though private worship and prayer is enormously important, but in public as well. The danger of people thinking they could be Christians all by themselves was, it seems, present in the early church just as today, and verse 25 warns against it. This may well not be due to people not realising what a corporate thing Christianity was and is, nor yet because they were lazy or didn’t much like the other Christians in their locality, but because, when there was a threat of persecution…it’s much easier to escape notice if you avoid meeting together with other worshippers. Much safer just not to turn up.’ Tom Wright: ‘Hebrews for Everyone’, pp.116/117.

Well, safer physically maybe, but not spiritually.

One thing we clearly should not do in the light of Jesus’ ever-nearing coming is to give up meeting together.

Even before the pandemic, the pattern of church attendance was changing. It appeared to be the case that for increasing numbers of professing Christians in the UK, regular involvement was becoming once a fortnight, or even once every three or four weeks – once every so often. But the pandemic seems to have accelerated that direction of travel. For us, this is not about playing it safe in a hostile environment. It is primarily about personal preference and convenience: about how we choose to spend our week-ends. It doesn’t look or feel very much like New Testament discipleship, and I have to say it just isn’t healthy.