Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: All right, we're back, and I want to ask you a question: Why should you go to church? It's interesting in Acts 2:42, the Bible says the early Christians devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

But I know a lot of people in Europe, America, and Canada that would say, "I don't have to go to church every Sunday. Why do I need to go there? Why do I have to interact with people? What is this thing about fellowship that is so important, Sundar?"

Sundar: The thing that comes to my mind right away is one of the Psalms. Psalm 122 says, "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'" It gives you three reasons. First of all, it says, "There the tribes of Israel go." They have a sense when they go there that they are part of something much, much bigger.

All of us have two deep longings in our hearts. We want to be part of something small enough to be significant but large enough to be meaningful. When you're by yourself doing your own thing, you might be doing some things that give you a sense of significance, but meaning never comes from that. Meaning comes from being connected to something much bigger than yourself.

Every week, I'm going to be connected to something much larger. Every week, the worship service becomes a recalibration of our souls. Secondly, it says, "There the thrones of judgment stand." There God's word is going to speak. I'm living for six days in a world where I'm hearing so many other voices. We're being knocked about all over the place. We drift.

Sneaked in there, it says, "As God ordained it." They went because God told them to. If we are followers of Jesus, there's a dimension that we follow Him as Lord, and He says, "Don't forsake the gathering together of yourselves" for these reasons. I have to connect with other people who are different than I am because it is the people who are different than me—wired personality-wise, character-wise, and spiritual gift-wise—who will enable me to grow. If you want to grow, you cannot do it alone.

Dr. John Ankerberg: I think that the fellowship is very important. Shami, talk about some of the people that have come out of the church because other Christians cared for them. The fellowship is caring for fellow people. I've got a lot of illustrations, and maybe you do, too. Tell me about some other folks.

Shami: As Sundar said, one of the beautiful things about being a follower of Jesus Christ is that you become part of a family. When a person says they don't want to go to church, it would be like someone saying, "I don't want to come to family gatherings." Then you miss out on the relationships within the family, you miss out on the richness of the family, and you miss out on knowing the heritage you have as a member of this family.

We tend to think that the minister is the one who is going to minister to the people. Our church has about 700 people in it, and I have come to see that actually our church is made up of 700 ministers, John. Each one of us God allows the privilege of just listening and sometimes praying with them, sometimes just giving a word of encouragement.

I remember a family that came to our church. They had actually come from a very difficult situation. They happened to be sitting beside me for the first time they had come to our church. I just greeted them and welcomed them and then found out that they were there for the first time. Before long, the lady had tears in her eyes as she began to talk about the difficulties from which she had come.

I didn't have the answers for her problems, but I just prayed with her because I love to take people to Jesus. Today, 20-some years later, she will still say to me, "I remember the Sunday I came and you spoke to me." They have stayed. Her husband became an elder in our church, and she is a beautiful woman of God who has an incredible gift of hospitality and is blessing so many people.

When I go to church, I often say, "Lord, who is it you want me to minister to? You direct even where I sit," so that there's nothing just accidental. God in His sovereignty allows you to sit beside somebody. That person could end up being a minister to you, but also He allows you to use the gifts He has given you and the heart He has given you to bless them so that we are all built up. That has been my experience at our church for 30-some years.

Dr. John Ankerberg: 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, "Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing." I have to think in our small little church that we go to, there was a lawyer that I got to know who was busy all the time. He was one of the sharpest lawyers in our city, and yet he felt the responsibility of teaching the young college kids.

I found out many years after I'd been attending the church, and after this man had passed away and gone to heaven, I was sitting with scholars in a meeting. The scholar said, "I grew up in your city." I didn't know this; this is a great Reformation scholar, one of the top in our country. I asked what church he went to, and he gave me the church, and it was our church. I said, "Goodness sakes, I never knew that."

I asked who his Sunday School teacher was, and it was that lawyer. He said, "He influenced me every Sunday by teaching." I have another friend who is a pastor of a large church, and his congregation is used to inviting lots of people that are not Christians to the church. In fact, one was a homosexual prostitute who had over 1,100 relationships with different men.

A lot of people might say, "I don't think we want him to come to our church." He came to that church, the people loved him, and because of that, he looked at Jesus. He heard that Jesus was willing to forgive him of all of those sins, and what's more, He could change him. He put his faith in Jesus, and Jesus did change him.

Sundar, when I think about how the fellowship of believers has influenced different people, and because of that encouragement, people have gone to the ends of the world, people have become this or that or gone into the ministry. There's one lady in our church we call the "prayer lady" because she spends so much time in prayer. When she prays, it seems like things happen. We all know her; she's a businesswoman, but she spends time in prayer. It's very interesting, the fellowship of believers.

Sundar: I think the whole intercession that you talked about—anytime I go anywhere, I know there's an army of people in our church who are praying for me every step of the way. I keep them informed on what is happening, and some are actually living in other parts of the world and they will pray for me daily, assignment by assignment. Where would I be without the body?

To add to your earlier question, our son learned to become—he's a pastor today, but he first started that journey by learning to become a worship leader in the church that he attended while he was at university. Another local church, completely different from ours, shaped him into who he is today.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Now I want to talk to a lot of you in India and Africa and South America where you do not have a large group of believers. I've heard from people that said, "I'm the only Christian in my city that I know about. So what do I do?" I want to just say that if you just can find another one or two believers and you can gather together. I've heard from Christians in North Africa where secretly they have to meet.

They meet together, and sometimes the way they talk, I think their fellowship is better than our fellowship that we've got. Two or three that know that they could be killed if they were found out, and yet they found each other and they pray. What it does is encouraging them. Talk a little bit about that.

Sundar: There I'm so completely dependent, like you, upon the stories that I hear from these places because we don't know what it is to be deprived. In a sense, we get so easily self-sufficient, whereas when these people have nobody but Jesus and throw themselves upon Him in mercy, then He does show up.

I wonder what lessons we can learn. This is why I think so often the church in the West desperately needs to learn from what God is doing in these places where they don't have money and don't have this and don't have that, but all they have is Jesus. He shows up in ways that He's often absent in our churches. I always ask myself: What if we got that desperate for Jesus? Is there any desperation for Jesus to show up in our churches?

Dr. John Ankerberg: I just say that because some of you that may be watching this video online in a country like that, or you're in a village where there are no Christians that you know of: Pray to God and ask Him to lead you to another person that might be a believer or lead you to somebody that is open to listening to you talk about how you can become a Christian.

I've heard of Christians in India that have gone into a village and they got beaten up. They went back the next day and got beaten up again. They went back five days in a row; every day this man got beaten up. He got beaten up so bad the last time, they said, "Next time you come, we're going to kill you." He waited for three days and he went back to that same village.

He finally asked them before they killed him, "Why is it that you're going to kill me?" They said, "Because you're going to talk bad about our gods." He said, "Oh, no, I'm so sorry that you got the idea that I talk bad about your gods. I just want to talk about my God and how good He is and how He would love you and He wants to take care of you and He wants to supply your need and He can forgive your sins and you can know you're going to heaven. That's the God I wanted to talk about."

They said, "Well, then come on in." He led 11 of them to the Lord, and he finally moved to that little city where they had beaten him up five days in a row and said they were going to kill him. He became the pastor of 11 believers in that city.

Sundar: To give encouragement for people, I heard one amazing story in Nepal where 17 men had been doing a correspondence course on the Bible and they all showed up to mail their letters at the same time at the same place, and they formed a local church.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Next week, we're going to talk about—okay, you have the group of believers called the church, and Jesus has given every one of us in the church a job to do. It's called the Great Commission. We're going to talk about that next week. I hope you'll join us.