There are Sundays when faithfulness feels ordinary, even inconvenient. Not because we doubt God, but because we are tired. The weather is unkind. The calendar is full. The week has already asked too much.
Last Sunday was one of those mornings. Cold. Rainy. The kind of day we call “doomy” in our house, a toddler’s cognate for “gloomy,” coined in an earlier chapter of our family history.
For all intents and purposes, we had reasons to stay home. It had been a busy week and a busy weekend. I was preparing to fly out to Vietnam in a couple of days. We were running on fumes.
We went anyway.
When we arrived, we were met by the same cheerful crew of greeters we see each week. Men of a different generation, whose steady smiles and familiar handshakes have become a small blessing to us over time.
One of them, Mr. Bill, has taken to checking in on our family when I am abroad. That morning he stopped me and said he had been awakened early, with a persistent sense that he should be praying for me, and for the upcoming trip.
After we dropped Vera off and walked into the ministry center, I ran into a friend named Tom. He told me he was praying regularly for me and the ministry. When I shared a bit more about the plans for Vietnam, he said, “Thanks, Mathew. Now I know how to pray specifically.”
It was neither irony nor serendipity, but the weight of it settled on me. We had come to church cold, wet, weary, and late. It felt like we had spent our last ounce of strength just getting to the door. Yet once we stepped inside, everything changed.
Two brothers, unprompted, had been moved to intercede for the very trip I am now on.
At the same time, I was catching up with friends we have been praying for throughout the week.
And then, as worship rose, I looked over and saw another friend of ours, arms raised, praising God with all that was within her. Her family is in the middle of a serious and frightening cancer diagnosis, rare and aggressive. The circumstances are heavy. The fear is real. Yet there she was, undaunted, worshiping with what looked like a steadiness borrowed from somewhere beyond her own strength.
In that moment, Hebrews 10:25 stopped being a verse we quote and became a reality we could see.
“Not neglecting to meet together,” the author writes, “but encouraging one another.” The Spirit does not speak as though the gathered life of the church is a spiritual accessory, nice when convenient and optional when inconvenient. The gathered church is one of God’s ordinary means of sustaining His people.
Church is not primarily a building, a time slot, or a style. Church is people. It is brothers and sisters, image bearers remade by grace, gathered in unity to worship the Creator with one voice, and to lift one another up in prayer.
And there is a mysterious tenderness in this: when the body gathers, we do not only hear about Christ. We often see His shape.
If the church is His body to the world, then there are moments when, by God’s mercy, we catch a glimpse of Him. Not in spectacle, but in the quiet strength of intercession. In specific prayers. In faithful presence. In worship that persists through fear.
It was beautiful.
This is also where we see a picture of proximity discipleship lived out.
We gather, not as consumers, but as a family. We draw near to Christ, and in doing so we draw nearer to one another. We learn each other’s burdens and names. We pray with specificity. We encourage each other toward endurance. And we are sent back out, strengthened for ordinary life.
If the week has been heavy, and we feel the pull to withdraw, Hebrews 10:25 invites us to lean in.
We may arrive tired. We may arrive distracted. We may arrive with very little to offer. Yet in the kindness of God, the gathered body is often already prepared to meet us there, with prayer, encouragement, and reminders that we are not carrying the burden alone.
Right now, I am in Vietnam for the Proximity Discipleship Seminar. I am here to encourage, empower, and mobilize 25 participants who have come to learn, to practice, and to return to their home villages ready to lead others into the same kind of discipleship in their local churches.
Please continue to pray for strength, clarity, and unity. Pray that what is taught and practiced here will not remain in a room, but will multiply through faithful believers, household by household and village by village, as Christ builds His church.
Proximity discipleship is not complicated, but it is costly. It is the slow, faithful work of drawing near to Jesus and drawing near to people, so that lives are formed over time.
And for many of us, the most honest on ramp is also the most basic obedience: do not neglect meeting together.
If we have been drifting, start here. Return to the gathered church. Be present. Let others know our name and our burdens. Learn theirs. Receive the ordinary grace of worship, prayer, and the Word with the people of God, and let encouragement become a weekly practice rather than an occasional idea.
Then we can take a simple next step: identify one or two people we can invest in with prayer, Scripture, and consistent presence, and invite them to do the same.
From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27