Is a Small Group a Substitute for Sunday Worship?

How do we understand the role of Sunday worship in the Christian life? Today, Sinclair Ferguson reflects on the nature of the church and what Scripture teaches about gathering together as Christ’s people.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: This week on the Ask Ligonier podcast, we’re recording live from Ligonier’s 2025 National Conference, and we’re joined by the vice chairman of Ligonier Ministries, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. Dr. Ferguson, how do you respond to someone who says they don’t need to attend Sunday worship services because their small group is a church?

DR. SINCLAIR B. FERGUSON: Well, I tend to take a kind of softly, softly approach to statements which I think are in great error, first of all to see, What is the person really thinking and saying? And usually, if I think what someone says is an error, there’s usually what I would call a paradigm behind that. But it’s not just about this that they’re thinking wrongly; it’s about many things that they’re thinking wrongly. So, I think I would probably say, first of all, “What do you mean by church?” And that would be like a physician’s diagnostic question to try to make a connection between what they are saying, which is a disease. It is a symptom; it’s pathological. And I want to know, From what has it arisen? And if they begin to speak and tell me what they think a church is, I think the simplest thing then to do is to say—and you want to hold onto them so you can help them—is to say, in essence, “That’s not actually what the New Testament means by church,” to say to them, as Nehemiah says, you remember, to Sanballat and Tobiah: “You’re making this up out of your own head. This is really nonsense. So let’s look at what the New Testament says about a church.”

So what does the New Testament say about a church? Well, we just need to read through the Acts of the Apostles, or Paul’s letters, or even to see what Jesus is doing when He is building the church. And that means, for example, that a church is not just some isolated group of people who meet according to their whims and fancies in their own house, where, as Spurgeon said, we all meet together and none of us knows anything, and we all teach each other. Now, Spurgeon could get away with saying that. I probably can’t get away with saying that without annoying people. But actually it is true because Paul says, “Christ has set in the church, first of all, Apostles and prophets and evangelists, and pastors and teachers.”

And so, we find in the New Testament church that a New Testament church has people who are gifted to teach Scripture. That’s not a small group. They’re gifted to expound the Word of God to us. We have people who pastor us. We are under a certain kind of authority in the church. This is not a free-for-all. The church of Jesus Christ is not a small group democracy. It’s a kingdom that’s ruled by Jesus Christ. And one would hope that just by patiently working through the teaching of the New Testament, it would dawn on them that actually what they have said is a sign of sickness.

And it may also be that—the older writers used to have an expression that they used—it may be an indication of will-worship, that I am sovereign in what I do in my Christian life, and I don’t give a rap about what Christ said or what the Apostle Paul said. And if that’s the case, then I think the next stage is to try and help them see that they are in real spiritual difficulties. The presenting symptom may be their misunderstanding of the church, but the actual disease is their unwillingness to read and listen to the word of Christ in Scripture.

So, in that sense, I think that the medical model or even the dental model is a helpful way to proceed, because, actually, both the medical model and the dental model arise, in logical terms, from the way in which Scripture goes about diagnosing spiritual pathology. And then I think I would invite them to whatever church I was a member of.