Spiritual Disciplines: Gathering for Worship

“Some Christians try to go to heaven alone, in solitude. But believers are not compared to bears or lions or other animals that wander alone. Those who belong to Christ are sheep in this respect, that they love to get together. Sheep go in flocks, and so do God’s people.” -Charles Spurgeon

In this week’s post, I want us to continue to look at the spiritual disciplines by looking at the subject of worship. In previous weeks, I defined the spiritual disciplines as the same as a good faith attempt to follow Jesus. More specifically, I said that it is “following Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself.”¹ Jesus chose a life of attending corporate (i.e., gathered) worship services in order to focus on and respond to God. Can Christians learn something about going to church from Jesus? That’s a great question! Thank you for asking. The answer is both “yes” and “no.” I want to dispel some mistaken conceptions with the “no” side of the answer, and, in the brief length of a blog post, I want to show you just some of the riches of what the Bible has to say on the “yes” side of the answer. We will start with the shorter list of those two, but before that, let’s briefly define worship.

I think Donald S. Whitney defines worship well in his book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. He writes, “Worship often includes words and actions, but it goes beyond them to the focus of the mind and heart. Worship is the God-centered focus and response of the soul; it is being preoccupied with God. So no matter what you are saying or singing or doing at any moment, you are worshiping God only when He is the center of your attention. But whenever you do focus on the infinite worth of God, you will respond in worship as surely as the moon reflects the sun.”² Worship is certainly much, much more than singing songs to God. Worship can be changing your baby’s diaper. It can be a moment of reflection and prayer before you step into your place of work. It can be the washing of the dishes at the end of a long day. Worship can be more than singing and reading God’s Word and responding to what God’s Word tells you in a sermon, but it is certainly not less than that.

Christians cannot learn about going to church from Jesus if by that you consider church to be a kind of service industry that tunes up the tires and engines of your spiritual vehicle. Churches are not interchangeable entities that simply perform the same functions at higher or lower levels of efficiency. Allow me an analogy here. In my neighborhood, we have two Jack in the Box locations. (Very spiritual example, I know.) One Jack in the Box has a perfectly fine track record with me and my family. We get what we pay for. The staff there are professional and timely. The other Jack in the Box has a staff member who has engaged, on multiple occasions, in short-changing our order, demanding we pay him after the fact for things we spoke aloud in our order, and has openly rudely criticized us (“you should have said you wanted that when you first made your order”). I’m not perfect, but I’m also not petty enough to get into it with that manager any more. I simply don’t want to do business at that location any more, so I don’t. I get the exact same products, but I also get them accurately and without undue criticism. It is a worldly—or, really, a biblically ignorant—way of thinking to consider a church to function like any other business. It is worldly to think the church needs to fit everything I want out of a church. It needs to have a great preacher, great music, a beautiful place to meet, hot coffee when I show up to service, and it better only have smiling faces of people who have no problems. And if those people do have problems, well, they better have nothing to do with me. But church is not a fast food place or an auto shop. Church is family. Church is a gathering of God’s people. The gathering of God’s people is meant to glorify God, not you. The gathering of God’s people is to make God known, to encourage one another, to serve as a hospital for the broken, not as a beautiful museum for the saints. If we think church is an American corporation we can simply change for another at our whim or convenience, then no, we can learn nothing about this from the life of Jesus.

“When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy.” -Corrie Ten Boom

Jesus does, however, show us life in the gathered community of God’s people. Jesus participated in the weekly gathering of corporate worship. Luke 4 records Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth, but the context of that rejection occurs around Jesus reading and expounding on the scroll of Isaiah. For our purposes, the most relevant verse is 16, which says, “He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read” (emphasis added). A more literal translation using the Greek word order³ would read, “… He entered according to the custom of his on the day of the Sabbath…” The phrase “as usual” (or, “according to his custom”) translates κατὰ (according to) τὸ (the) εἰωθὸς (custom) αὐτῷ (his).⁴ I highlight the Greek phrasing here in order to show that the phrase “as usual” or “according to his custom” is not an addition by a modern translator or editor. The Gospels tell us Jesus’ habit was to attend the weekly worship service at his local synagogue. Psalm 95:6 says, “Come, let’s worship and bow down;
let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker.” Picture what that looked like when Jesus obeyed that directive in the synagogue in Nazareth and when he was in the temple in Jerusalem. God expects us to worship. Jesus did just that.

If the Bible reports that the perfectly holy, perfectly loving God the Son attended the weekly gathering of God’s people, then the Bible has something to say to mankind in all periods of history, but especially to us in the age of so-called online church or the myopic practices of individualistic Christianity.

“The single most important activity of your life is to worship God. You were made for this—to offer your whole life, in all its parts, as a hymn of praise to the Lord.” -Sinclair Ferguson

Jesus’ participation in the weekly worship service of God’s people shows that it is a necessity, not mere tradition or cultural preference. Notice that Jesus spends a lot of time with his disciples and that the disciples spend a lot of time with one another. These decisions are not accidents or coincidences. These gatherings, these times of worship,⁵ are part of the design. Jesus sang hymns with his disciples at the conclusion of their Passover observance, aka the Last Supper, before they went out to the Garden of Gethsemane in Matt. 26:30. Jesus read the Isaiah scroll and expounded on it in Luke 4, as referenced above. But he also would have stayed silent and listened as others did so when it was their turn.

“Be united with other Christians. A wall with loose bricks is not good. The bricks must be cemented together.” -Corrie Ten Boom

We know Jesus focused on and responded to God in a variety of moments, but I want to encourage you not to miss the night leading up to Jesus’ betrayal by Judas. All four Gospels record that moment at various lengths. Luke 22:42 records an incredible moment in Jesus’ worship through prayer that night. In it, Jesus prays, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Truly, this response to God is the best response to God. May it be true of you and I that we respond to him in that same way every day.

“To gather with God’s people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.” -Martin Luther

Christians today can follow Jesus’ example in the spiritual disciplines by engaging in daily private worship and public worship at least once a week. (Your church may have more than one opportunity to worship together.) Make no mistake: you must have both regular private and public worship in order to best follow Jesus. He deserves our best, but you know what? You deserve your best, too. Engage in daily private times of reading the Bible and praying. Maybe play a worship song on your phone that you can sing along to. But don’t stay isolated! Make sure you at least attend your local church’s worship service in person every week, unless you are limited by illness or mobility. You need it. May we not be indifferent to the regular, disciplined worship of God! May it be true of us what Hebrews 12:28 says, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (ESV).

I want to close with a quote from A.W. Tozer. He said, “If you will not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week.”⁶

1. Link to the original post giving an overall introduction to spiritual disciplines here: https://adamwchristman.com/2025/08/19/an-introduction-to-spiritual-disciplines/ ↩︎
2. Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2014), 106. ↩︎
3. Readers should be aware that Greek word order does not function the same as in English. Greek grammar communicates the function of the various words through their forms, rather than through their arrangement in the sentence. Word order in Greek, therefore, is not limited to “subject-verb-object,” as in English. Rather, it is flexible enough to allow for options that will create emphasis on what the writer wishes to emphasize. So, while I am providing here a word order-based literal translation, that does not make it a better translation than the CSB version quoted previously. It is done here for the sake of understanding. ↩︎
4. Please forgive how the Greek letters look. I did my best! WordPress isn’t a perfect platform. ↩︎
5. John chapters 7 and 8 show Jesus spending time at the Feast of Booths in Jerusalem, which would have included times of corporate worship. ↩︎
6. John Blanchard, ed., More Gathered Gold: A Treasury of Quotations for Christians (Welwyn, England: Evangelical Press, 1986), 344. ↩︎