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Megan Hill is a pastor’s wife and a pastor’s daughter so you’d think that she would love going to church every Sunday. But she candidly admits  that she is glad she’s a pastor’s wife so she has to go to church every Sunday 'and that’s God’s blessing to me. Just by showing up one Sunday after another, I learn to love this church that the Lord has given to me. It doesn’t mean you love everything about the church.'

In an interview with Crossway Hill talks about why the local church is so important and beautiful, even when it looks a bit `ho-hum’. The mustard seed was also seemingly small and insignificant, but Jesus reminded us it would  grow into a great tree – it will provide shelter for people from many nations. God seems to like working with ordinary and unimportant things and people, and only Scripture can show us the truth of what’s actually going on.

The internet now provides so many sources of high quality teaching to help us grow in our understanding of theology. So why do we need our local church if the teaching and the music is not as exciting as anything we can find online? Hill gives three answers to this: the Bible tells us it’s important to meet together – there is no one in the Bible who does the Christian life on their own. The church also gives us something that can’t be found in a podcast or a book: we become part of the body of Christ which, whatever we may benefit from or contribute to the church, is far greater than any group of individuals. In this body, we find Christ. We are usually the ones who choose our friends, but in a church, these are the people God has chosen for you. These are the people God is teaching us to love.

One of the most illuminating answers Hill gives is to the question of the significance of our Sunday morning worship time. Shouldn’t we be 'doing church' all the time? How do we balance it with fellowship, discipleship, mercy ministries, outreach and other important ministries of the church? Hill’s answer is that church at its essence is God’s worshipping people.  Although all these other ministries are vital, everything we do is so we can worship God better, and more people can join us in that worship. It’s good to keep that in focus – our gathered worship is our main thing!

All the way through God’s redemptive story the idea of belonging to God’s family has been crucial: from Adam and Eve, it was not good for Adam to be alone. God puts us together as his people in a particular place and blesses us there. It’s a place where we grow healthy relationships by telling each other that we love them, that we are grateful for the gifts that they use for Christ, and that we are sorry for the ways we hurt them. Our relationship with Jesus is personal but not private. Church membership is not a substitute for a personal faith, but equally personal faith is not a substitute for the communal corporate worship of our God.

Hill says she is praying that this season of absence will make our hearts grow fonder: we will love each other better and have a sharpened desire to be together and to hear each other’s voices singing and long to share the Lord’s supper together.  But she hopes the good things we’ve learned in this time won’t be forgotten – that we’ll be intentional about reaching out to those who are living along, who have special needs or who are immune compromised in some way. And as our lives get busier, we don’t forget those who are hurting in some way.

Lane Butt