Thanks to Joanne for sharing her thoughts on the matter and her posting has encouraged me to post some thoughts on my own.  I have actually thought a lot about the relationship between cell vs. worship vs. other priorities recently as I have been thinking a lot about the direction of my cell group in the youth group in the coming years.  The prevalent thinking amongst the ‘spiritual babies’ is that worship is compulsory and cell group is optional.  This may because they perceive worship as being more formal, thus more holy and cell group as a mere social event after worship to discuss bible stuff.  To denounce them would be wrong as they are spiritually very young and their deduction is actually intuitively sound…I also share their perception as well before! 

How wrong could I be!

It was not until university that I truly understood the meaning of cell group.  My church ‘tutor’ at the time was Aneirin (whom a lot of you would have met last time he came to Hong Kong) explained to me that life as a Christian is ‘going against the flow’.  What this means is that the ways of the world, greed, lust, pursue of fame and fortune is like a river going one way and the life a Christian, having God like qualities is going in an opposite direction.  This inevitably will become extremely tiring and over time if we continue on our own, we will be washed away!!!  This is where the cell group comes into play.  The cell group is a time for us to recharge our batteries and share our troubles and challenges with one another.  It is a time to encourage and to read the bible together to discern God’s message to us.  It is compulsory in the sense that if we do not recharge our batteries, we will be washed away!!!

I am currently reading a book called ’12 revelations from the 10 commandments’ given to me by Charmaine.  The author talks about the 4^th commandment; keeping the Sabbath a way for us to ‘rest’.  I was very happy when I read that as I am a professional at resting.  I love sitting in the lounge with the air conditioner fully turned on and ordering people around to serve me:P.  However, as I read on, I realized that the bible has a different meaning to resting.  Resting, according to the bible is to appreciate God’s rescue of his people and to dwell in this wonderful and gracious act.  No wonder the bible says ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ and not ‘know that I am God and be still’.  We need to quiet ourselves down before we can ‘know God’. 

Finally, I think Joanne makes a very good point people using ‘serving’ as an excuse for not attending cell and church.  We must remember that ‘serving’ is not really serving in the sense that we are not dispensable and that we are the only who can perform the duty.  I like to see serving as a ‘secondary’ gift given us to God so that we can appreciate God’s grace even more.  It is ‘secondary’ because it is less important than our basic Christian duties of worship and cell, a time which we can truly ‘rest’ in God.   We received salvation not because we ‘served’ but because we were willing to ‘rest’ in Christ.  Remember the ‘serving monster’ (I love this term Joanne!) Martha in the bible who became very bitter because Jesus gave more attention to Mary who was ‘resting’.  Let this be a guide to how we treat our priorities in life!

Jeremy