Personal Fellowship with God or Corporate?

[timfost]

Much here seems to rest upon experience in worship and a weak ecclesiology. While we can rejoice that God at times allows us experiences, what we feel regarding worship really matters not at all. What matters is if God has been glorified in the way he has decreed. He commands us to come together as a body to worship.

I think that you're correct to caution against looking for an emotional experience in worship. We don't want to go the charismatic route. On the other hand, being in an intimate relationship with God should evoke strong feeling. To worship God with the whole heart is for our intellects, wills and emotions to be awakened and stimulated. I think you are guarding against sinful emotions, or emotions that do not also involve the use of our intellects and wills as interacting with the Word of God (such an imbalance does not suggest worship with the whole heart).

a person can have no corporate worship, but have a private relationship with God, and still be a Christian.

This is false. Outside the church there is no normal means of salvation. "Private relationship" has more in common with 19th-century pelagian revivalism than with confessional Christianity.

I'm not sure if there is disagreement between what Ryan said and what you're saying. Certainly many of us were first saved outside of a church. You qualified your statement with "normal," a qualification I don't think Ryan was denying.

In summary, I think that it's important that we don't create dichotomies as we speak about corporate and private worship, sacraments, etc. Yes, God can and does often first bring us salvation outside of the church. But our salvation does not consist in our justification alone. Rather, our salvation consists in our justification, sanctification and glorification. Because of the comprehensive nature of our salvation, God has ordained that we take advantage of all of the means set before us. There is a beautiful unity in all of these means and to separate them or create dichotomies as to their importance denies the holistic nature of God's provision.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

It has been the case that in some lands where believers are ruthlessly hunted and persecuted (such as Saudi Arabia), and where converts from Islam face the death penalty, that God's people may have genuine saving faith—through internet or radio evangelism, etc—but be completely cut off from other believers, may not even know any other believers.

Psalm 33:18,19 Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy;
To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.

I knew a man, an evangelical Egyptian Christian, who would evangelize over the radio, communicate with converts via text message, then would travel to the countries of the converts and would gather them into small assemblies so they could worship together.

 

[jwithnell]

To worship God with the whole heart is for our intellects, wills and emotions to be awakened and stimulated. I think you are guarding against sinful emotion

I'm more concerned about the subjective nature of our experiences. You see among the puritans a vibrant life of personal devotion. The problem comes when one either measures his faith by the experiences or tries to rank Christian duties by them.

One might come to faith, as I did through reading, but if that new life is not engaged in the church, it will die. Ref: WCF 25.2