Do not give up meeting together
Jonny and I are just back from ten days in Hungary. I was speaking at the church that David and Eva Parker came from in Budapest. Every year they go away for a whole week, to enjoy one another's company, to relax and to learn together.
There were many things that I was reminded of during the week but one central theme was the importance of true fellowship between believers. Although the communist bloc collapsed 20 years ago now, memories are still strong for many. The church was formally an illegal church, meeting in a methodist church building but functioning independently. I heard many stories of how this church and others in neighbouring countries would meet up. Birthday parties were celebrated enthusiastically and secretly included Christian songs, teaching and prayer. A hike into the forest would include a picnic and a sermon! Every opportunity had to be taken to meet together for encouragement and teaching.
These experiences had left a wonderful mark on the church. They are passionately committed to small groups. Formally it was sometimes the only way they could meet up, and they learned the benefit of close relationships and bible based discussion. A very large proportion of the church annually gives up a week of family holiday to come to the camp that I was speaking at. They testified how much this bound them together. There were long conversations into the night, even on one occasion through to morning! They had an evening showing pictures from the past and I witnessed helpless laughter, quiet tears, and the silence of shared grief, as days gone by, and people now with the Lord, were remembered.
I am reminded of the proud claim of the early theologian Tertullian. He described the life of early Christians and recorded how the world around was mystified by their community life, saying with bewilderment "see how they love one? another."
Perhaps especially I was challenged by the hurdles we have in developing and maintaining a strong Christian community. We don't have recent common experiences which have taught us the absolute necessity of encouraging one another. However it is not just communism that destroys faith - we need one another in the fight against sin itself.
Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:13)
And we also live in an incredibly mobile society. In the ten years after the collapse of communism the church I was ministering amongst lost no members at all. Every year we lose up to 20% of our membership, almost entirely through people leaving Oxford. Every Autumn we gain a similar number. For those of us who stay, the autumn is a period of meeting new people, of welcoming them amongst us and of learning to love them. I cannot express strongly enough how proud I am of the church's annual efforts in this. We are swimming against the tide of our society but I often feel I am the proud pastor of Olympians!
Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:1-2)
A Romanian lady told me quite incidentally about how an unknown Christian turned up after midnight in the communist days. They weren't allowed to entertain foreigners, and it could have been a trick, but of course they took him in. Next morning, at breakfast time there was a knock on the door. A "gas man" arrived "to check the meter." Thankfully the visitor had risen before dawn and slipped away into the night.
There was no doubt about their commitment to love one another, and I return home spurred on to imitate them.
Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:25)
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