In the internet age, our hearts and minds are taken in dozens of different directions on any given day. Our attention is easily shifted from this outrage to that grievance; this amusement to that distraction. Naturally, the fast-moving, present-tense, ephemeral nature of our media environment leads us to be fidgety and forgetful people. We lose our grip on the bigger story and our place within it.

This is one of the reasons why, for the Christian, church is so vital. The regular rhythms of gathered worship keep us grounded in God’s story—reminding us who he is, what he has done, and who we are as his people. After a socially distanced year when many Christians were formed more by their social media feeds than by their church community, the urgency of rediscovering church is heightened. Peter Newman points this out in the article below.

“If we don’t carve out at least one day a week to be powerfully reminded of our place in the Christian story, our already fragile, fickle, and forgetful hearts will invariably stray from this story,” Newman argues. “In a world so often distorted by online life, we need the clarifying force of God’s Word read, preached, prayed, sung, and tasted. To stay in and live out God’s story, we need to remember it. And to remember it, we need to go to church.”