In case you have forgotten the gathering of the church isn’t for guests, visitors or the uninitiated. It’s for believers, the faithful, followers and worshipers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In case you have forgotten, your personal, private life is now a member of the Body of Christ and is to be given away to serve others and invite them into your life and love with Jesus.  Jesus’ own life was one day in the synagogue and six days living, working, serving and ministering among the community.

Try going to a synagogue, mosques, shrine, temple of any other religious establishment and see if their gathering is geared toward you. I have and it’s not. You’re welcome there for the most part, but they are not catering to you. I’m not sure you get a visitors parking space or special treatment, they usually reserve that for their devotion to their deity.  Only the church as a business is more concerned with welcoming customers than worshiping their deity.

I even understand the Table of the Lord being an “open table” to whosoever will may come.  Then again, I recognize that the liturgy/ministry of the Table is reserved for the initiated/family of sons and daughters of the living God.  Even children of the covenant community need to be catechized to the ways and teaching of the Lord and his church.

The church stills loves to live under the old covenant of, we want Moses to talk to God for us, so we can go on living our life and pay our respects to the God on top of the mountain during visiting hours every week.

Let me ask you, Is your life, home, time, hospitality, gifts, resources, family, work, lunch, free time, etc. lived as the church or do you just attend a church?

Church = 1 hour a week
Your life = 167 hrs a week

We can talk about the story of the Good Samaritan, but even he was just walking through life.  So as you are going through life and you reach and rescue a man robbed like all of us because of the thief, then by all means minister to him and bring him to the Inn/Church, but one hour a week will not constitute him becoming a healed and whole disciple of Jesus.

If you are a stranger to the Way, you can come to our gathering, but we didn’t assemble because we were expecting to see you, we were expecting to see Him and honestly what we do, you may consider as not being for you.  But, then again, you may come face to face, if those who have gathered have been seeking his face instead of yours, with the One who gave you life and breath.  We call him Master, Creator, Redeemer, King.

The consumer church has become a non-prophet corporation.  “We are not the church when we come to church if we’re not the church before we come to church.” — Dallas Willard