Isn't Every Church Service Meant To Be A Celebration Of Easter?

An interesting thing happened yesterday, people showed up early for church.  And not just a few people, close to 50 people were sitting in the sanctuary waiting for service to start. This may not be odd for you and your church but let me assure you, this is shockingly different for us.  Usually first service starts with about 10 people in the sanctuary and by the time we're done with the third song there are close to 175 people.  It's normal at our church for people to mosey in to first service.

So hopefully you'll understand why 50 people sitting in the sanctuary 10 minutes before the service started would catch my attention.  Obviously yesterday was Easter, only the celebration of the most important day in history.  People come out of the woodwork on Easter to go to church, I get it. But I thought, if people can be in the sanctuary 10 minutes early on Easter surely they can be on time the rest of the year.

I don't think being late to church is a sin. Far from it. I understand that life happens, kids throw fits, you oversleep, there's traffic, etc.

But isn't every church service meant to be a celebration of Easter? That's what the Church is about.  If Jesus doesn't walk out of that tomb on the third day there is no Church, just a bunch of really disappointed disciples. The purpose of the Church is to celebrate the resurrection and share that news with everyone.  Our pastor did a great job reminding us of that truth yesterday.

The problem has become that we add church to our calendars as just another place we have to be, a place where we even have to be nice to people. Somewhere along the line we lost the correct perspective about the Church.

I'd love to learn what it looks like for church to be an incessant celebration of Easter. That would be so cool.

These thoughts, as always, are incomplete.  I'd love to know what you think about this!