The church service is a gathering that has a very special nature, different to a meeting, a lecture or an event. It is the workplace of the Holy Spirit. I will indicate this in a number of points

1. God is elevated far above us. He surpasses all our thinking. No-one has ever seen Him. No-one can penetrate to the depths of his being. It is only the Holy Spirit who knows him completely. The Spirit reveals as much as we need to know and instructs us on the gifts God has graciously bestowed on us. In the church we are concerned with more than objective information or business-like instruction or “cool” entertainment. We are dealing with divine revelation.
2. In order to receive, and identify with, this revelation more is needed than intellectual ability or an emotional antenna. The revelation does not come to us by a route of human wisdom but by the Spirit, who teaches and grants us insight. You must be spiritual to be able to receive the revelation. A person who does not have the Spirit does not accept what the Spirit of God offers us.
3. Revelation in the church has as its goal that you progress beyond a set of dogmatic convictions and moral points of view. God’s Spirit penetrates far deeper. He wishes to produce faith in our hearts and love for God. He wants to bind us to God and to Christ. This is not a trick that we as people are able to produce by some clever technique or method, it is something that only God’s Spirit is able to do, which he does freely and through pure grace.
4. There are those who say they believe but do not need the church for that. As if they through their own efforts brought themselves to faith! They forget that they heard the gospel from others, who were taught and fed in the church. I would never have come to faith were it not for the church where the Word of God is preserved and from where it is preached!
5. At meetings and in discussions we often work hard to find solutions for all sorts of problems. In the church we are concerned with a much deeper layer of our individuality. There we are offered salvation from our sinful existence. God’s Spirit offers us this salvation in a way that no man would ever have thought of. It is a way that is a cross for all human self-willed obstinacy: the gospel of Jesus Christ the Crucified and Resurrected.
6. Those who know God and Christ, look further and deeper than the length of their nose. In the church we learn to perceive things. Behind the events and circumstances that arise because of people and developments, the Spirit allows us to see the Lord who reigns over all. He is Sovereign. In evil and depravity he shows us sin and the consequences of sin. We see Christ, our Saviour. And we hold fast to God’s promises.
7. The church is not a gathering we choose to attend out of our own initiative. It is the place where God calls you, to which his Spirit leads you and where your faith is produced and strengthened. God’s Word embeds itself in your heart. You become part of God’s salvation.
8. The church cannot be compared to a performance put on by an artist of sorts, who is delighted that you have come, who will welcome you to his show and will encourage you as the audience to relax, sit back and enjoy the entertainment. In the church we may be very happy that we are allowed to come before the Lord. Here we do not enter as the king-pin but as a member anointed by the Holy Spirit to be part of Christ’s congregation, which may meet with her God and Lord. A congregation that brings her offerings of thanks and honour to God herself, through the Holy Spirit and does not allow other people to do that for her! She does that herself. After all, the liturgy from a human point of view is not a matter of the minister with the congregation as his guest, but worship of God by the congregation as a whole.
9. In the church, we as church-goers are not gathered as a group that all think alike, that cocoon themselves in a state of unanimity. As a congregation you meet before the throne of God. God’s Word functions there as a necessary “opposite”: it offers the salvation we need and which not one of us is able to effect; normatively it addresses you as a congregation regarding your life and deeds. It is the Word that has authority, and carries within it the power of repentance. In summary: if you go to church you expose yourself to the powerful realm of the Spirit.