Good Monday morning. Yesterday, most of us were at church, probably, but not all of us at church

were in church, though, because some of you were busy serving yesterday and not able to be in the

main gathering as one of the realities of church life, and it's the topic today. Of course,

we talked a lot about finding a good church and leaving a not-so-good church topic today. Of course, we've talked a lot about

finding a good church and leaving a not-so-good church, but I don't think we've ever talked

about missing gathered worship in order to serve somewhere else in the church on Sunday mornings.

That ends today with Trevor's question to you. Dear Pastor John, I have been greatly blessed

by listening to every single APJ episode since 2017.

Wow, that would be, by my count, that's 1,200 episodes since then.

That's a lot.

Trevor, thank you.

I have a question regarding serving during the Sunday morning worship service.

Is it appropriate to miss the service if you're

serving in another area of church, such as in the nursery? I've heard one of my pastors suggesting

alternating weeks between attending the worship service and volunteering, while I understand

that serving can be an active worship, according to Romans 12.1. I'm struggling to make peace with the

idea of missing the service,

is attending the worship service and sitting under the teaching of the pastors, say,

50% of the time, truly enough. Thank you for any guidance you can offer me.

Let me start with making a case for how beautiful it can be to serve some real need in the church,

like caring for the infants in the nursery, at the cost of missing some worship services.

And then I'll make the case for why this is not ideal and how you might move toward minimizing the absences.

...