Should families skip gatherings of the church to “spend more family time?”

Craig Houston explains in this video that as a pastor, his primary concern for Christian families is that they learn to love Christ’s church. Christ loves the Church and died for the Church. This refers to the visible, assembled body of believers. Christians are called to worship with, care for, and be accountable to the Church.

And yet, families excuse their frequent absences from gatherings of the church because they want to spend more time with their family. However, when you spend time in church, gathering together as a family with other families, you are not wasting time. Rather, you are spending time as a family in the best way that you possibly can. It is vitally important to have the right perspective of Christ, the Church, and to love what Jesus loves.

Hebrews 10:24-25 (NKJV) – “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

One of the concerns I have with Christian families is that they learn to love Christ's church. Christ loves the church. Christ died for the church. And when I speak of the church, I mean the visible, assembled body of believers, the one that you're accountable to, the one that you participate in, the one that you gather together for worship with, the one in which you are commanded to care for one another's needs, to take care of the household of faith. Frequently, people have used as an excuse not being faithful to church, not being faithful to worship because they want to spend more time with their family.

And I just want to exhort and encourage every family to recognize that when you spend time in church gathering together as a family, with a family of families, the family of God in the church, you are not wasting time. You are not spending quality family time. You are spending the greatest time as a family that you possibly can. And everything else in life will flow from that when you have a right perspective of Christ and his church and you learn to love what Jesus loves.