Hi Mark,
I’m happy to hear you’re going to church and enjoying it. It really does make a difference in our walk with Jesus to be walking it with others. We weren’t made to do this (mainly) alone, but with the Spirit of God primarily and then with fellow believers.
In your previous email you listed five or six questions about church. I’m only going to give answers to two of them. This isn’t because I don’t think the other questions are worth answering; it’s because I think it would be better for you to speak to your pastor and maybe others in your church about them. I’m happy to have the conversations and I hope they continue but, just so we’re both on the same page, you have a pastor and he’s not me. This doesn’t mean we can’t talk; it just means there are some things you’ll be better off speaking to your pastor about. When those things come up—as they did in your previous email—I’ll make sure you know. And, I think over time as your relationship with him grows, you’ll start to know on your own those things you’re better off speaking with him about.
That being said, you did ask a couple questions that I’d be happy to address. The first was: Are Christians supposed to go to church?
Yes, Christians are supposed to go to church, if by “supposed to” you mean it being the assumed and natural thing for them to do. If someone said I’m a Christian, I just don’t go to church, that would be like someone saying I’m a part of my family but I don’t know them nor do I spend any time with them. That person may indeed be a member of their family, but they sure don’t act like it. It’s a similar thing with church. If you’re a part of the Jesus family and the Jesus family gets together on a regular basis, why wouldn’t you be a part of that? To be clear, you can’t find a verse in the New Testament stating plainly that to be a Christian means you must attend church every Sunday. What you will find are verses throughout the New Testament that point to the habit of Christians gathering together on a weekly basis. I’ll leave it to you to find those places. So, what it seems to me is that this practice of “attending church” is not so much prescribed as in you must; instead, it seems to be described as in you will.
Your second question was: Does it matter what day I go to church?
There’s a historical way to answer that question and a practical way to answer it. The historical first. There are several places in the New Testament when the phrase “the Lord’s day” is mentioned and a couple of those are connected to the day when Christians come together. Where does this come from? It comes from the day Jesus rose from the dead, which was a Sunday—“the Lord’s day.” And, it seems that Christians (including Jews who believed in Jesus) started to gather on “the Lord’s day” to mark and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This day—Sunday—then became their natural day to meet. Now, when Paul was writing to Christians in Rome he got to a section of his letter when he addressed a misunderstanding of what days are important and what days aren’t. He said this: “One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord.” (Romans 14:5-6a, NIV) Applying Paul’s point to your question I think we could say something like there’s no reason for division over what day of the week a church service is held. For some, they want to stay connected with the historical practice of the early Christians and so they choose Sunday. Others, out of habit and more recent tradition also choose Sunday. And still others, because of practical reasons (of which there could be many) choose another day of the week. The point—if I might put it like this—is not to focus on the day you gather with the body of Christ, but that you gather.
Grace and peace to you and your church family!