Canadian Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church in Alberta has made headlines after his arrest for holding in-person church services. At the beginning of the lockdowns last year, GraceLife Church had complied with COVID-19 restrictions. However, this year, GraceLife opened its doors to resume regular church services once again. In December 2020, GraceLife was fined $1,200 for violating COVID-19 restrictions, which included that the church could only operate at 15% capacity. Pastor Coates did not believe it right to turn away any percentage of his congregation and believed that indefinite lockdowns were antithetical to church services as well as the health and well-being of the community. At the end of January, GraceLife Church was ordered to stop holding in-person services. However, Pastor Coates continued holding services and, when police and public health officials visited GraceLife in February, Pastor Coates was charged with violating the Public Health Act. The following Tuesday Pastor Coates turned himself in to the police. After attending a bail hearing, Pastor Coates was to be released but he would not comply with the conditions of his release. Those conditions included that he would cease holding in-person church services.
Some Christians have looked at this situation and shaken their heads, saying that Pastor Coates’ actions are an embarrassment to Christianity. After all, isn’t upholding a “good Christian testimony” more important than holding in-person services amid a pandemic? To them, Pastor Coates could have simply continued online services. “After all,” they may say, “church is not a building. You can worship God anywhere!” On the other hand, some Christians view Pastor Coates’ situation as an example of Christian persecution. To them, Pastor Coates was simply choosing to “obey God rather than men.”
A pastor being jailed for practicing his faith according to his conscience is not a new phenomenon. It has happened since the dawn of Christianity. However, the reason it has captured our attention is that it is a fairly new phenomenon for the Western Hemisphere. As Americans, we are sobered, realizing that if it could happen to our neighbor in Canada, it could happen to us. We have not had to grapple with what we believe about our relationship to God and government in the way that Christians in other parts of the world have had to for centuries.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused some friction in this area, and we have been provided with a prime opportunity to examine ourselves, I think, in three main areas. This pandemic and the oddness surrounding it prods us to examine our attitudes about church, submission to government, and persecution. So, whichever end of the spectrum you find yourself on regarding this issue, we should examine our current attitudes in these three areas. What is church? What is the proper relationship between living according to our conscience and submitting to human authority? What is the difference between legitimate persecution and simply suffering for rebellion? In this three-part series, we will look at each of these questions in turn.
First, we should examine our attitude toward church. In order to value church as we should, we must first understand what church is. The Bible describes the Church as the visible, tangible, body of Christ on earth today. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (I Corinthians 12:27). In the Bible, the word church, derived from the Greek word ekklesia, means “a calling out” or “an assembly.” So, the Church is essentially a called-out assembly of believers in order to form a visible representation of Christ to the world around them.
The idea that the church is not a building does not negate the fact that church is still an assembly of believers. Often, the Early Church assembled in a building, usually in the homes of fellow believers (Romans 16:5, I Corinthians 16:19, Colossians 4:15, Philemon 1:2). The point wasn’t so much the meeting place, but the meeting together. In Acts 11:26, the apostles “assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people.” In Acts 14:27, the apostles “gathered the church together.” In I Corinthians 11:18, Paul was addressing sin in the church, saying, “First of all, when ye come together in the church. . .” Discussing the use of tongues in the church, Paul said in I Corinthians 14:23 and 26, “If therefore the whole church be come together in one place . . . when ye come together . . . Let all things be done unto edifying.” In Acts 8:3, Saul is described before his conversion as having “made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and hailing men and women, committed them to prison . . .” These houses were likely the meeting houses (or the church houses) of these Christians. The point is that Saul knew where to find them because they met together as a body of believers. Each of these passages emphasizes the physical meeting of believers together. The fact that these early Christians put an emphasis on physically meeting together was no small matter, considering that they lived under a hostile government that despised them and their faith.
Now that we understand that the Church is an assembly of believers, we should consider the purpose of the Church, which flows from its definition as an assembly. We often hear that we can worship God anywhere; we don’t have to be in church to do that. While it is true that we can worship God anywhere, we cannot “do church” just anywhere. The essence of church is the assembling of ourselves together for the purpose of encouraging each other in Christ. Hebrews 10:23-25 paints a beautiful picture of what the New Testament Church is: “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” The context of Hebrews 10 is Jewish Christians who were discouraged due to persecution and were returning to the Levitical form of worship. Their lack of zeal for the Christian faith had also led to a lack of Christian community. They had ceased gathering together in Christian fellowship and, as a result, they were losing their hope in Christ.
For this reason, the writer of Hebrews reminded them of the faithfulness of Christ. He encouraged them to hold fast to their faith because Christ was faithfully holding onto them. In order to boost their hope in Christ, the writer of Hebrews challenged them to continue meeting together in Christian fellowship. The purpose was to provoke, meaning incite, each other to love and good works, and to exhort, meaning encourage, one another in their common faith.
The fact that these early Christians were admonished to physically meet together amid enormous social pressure and persecution should make us consider how we value church as modern believers. Are we so concerned about a disease with about 0.09% mortality rate for people under 65 that we are willing to suspend meeting in person indefinitely? If a higher mortality rate due to government persecution or hostile neighbors was not enough to keep these Christians away from church, perhaps we should examine how much we value church as an assembly of believers.
While we should certainly be cautious about COVID-19, the indefinite suspension of assembling together as a Christian community can also diminish hope in Christ, as it did for the Christians in Hebrew 10. The reason that “forsaking the assembling of ourselves together” diminishes our hope in Christ is that the very point of church is not a place or an order of service but a fellowship of Christians. It’s not about meeting a perceived need or getting a blessing out of the music or the sermon. Going to church isn’t really about us. It’s not even primarily about our personal worship, although we certainly worship God at church. Church is really about giving out to others and blessing others. That is the way we are to worship God at church. From Hebrews 10, we see that the church is gathering together as the body of Christ for the purpose of inciting each other to love and good works and encouraging each other in our common faith.
With this purpose in mind, it would seem that we can only “do church” effectively in person. While it is true that we can watch a sermon on TV, that is just . . . well, watching a sermon on TV; that is not church. While texting, calling, and direct messaging is a method for conveniently reaching out to and communicating with fellow church members, it is an extremely limited method. We cannot stir each other up to love and good works by our example over text. We cannot demonstrate our love to others through caring eye contact and a gentle hug or handshake over the phone. We cannot direct message an act of service to a fellow church member. After months of isolation due to COVID restrictions, we human beings are starved for the physical presence and touch of others. People, young and old, adults and children, have literally died of despair, loneliness, and depression during the COVID-19 restrictions. Just as we would for any other contagious illness, we should take necessary precautions. For instance, people who fear getting sick or fear passing something on to others can choose to stay home. However, we cannot indefinitely isolate ourselves at the expense of the mental, physical, and spiritual health of others. The objectives of church, which can only be met with our physical assembling, cannot be replaced with virtual church meetings and direct messages. While we should use these technological tools to assist our efforts as a church, we should never consider them a replacement for the regular assembling of ourselves together. We should value church as the irreplaceable assembling of ourselves together for the purpose of inciting each other to love and good works and encouraging each other in our faith.
If we do not value church as the assembling of ourselves together for this purpose, then we will assume that virtual church is an acceptable replacement. If we think that virtual church is an acceptable replacement, then we will not mind the indefinite timeframe that COVID restrictions have put on the suspension of in-person services. And if everyone becomes comfortable with virtual church indefinitely because “church isn’t a building” and you can “worship God anywhere,” then why would we ever go back to physically meeting together on a regular basis? The point is that we will not value church as we ought if we forget what the very essence of church is. Hebrews 10 admonishes us to value the assembling of ourselves together for the purpose of encouraging each other, especially as we “see the day approaching.” The day of Christ’s return could come at any moment. The point is that the day we find ourselves in, this age, this time, this day is a good time to examine whether or not we value church the way we should.