Should You Go to Church While on Vacation?

You may be planning your vacation. It could span over a couple of weekends preventing you from attending your home church. Should you find a church to attend while you are away? Yes, without any doubt.

Attending a church while on vacation will expose you to a different pattern of worship. It will make you think about what you have been doing and whether or not this new method is appropriate. You should ask yourself if it leads you closer to God. It may make you appreciate your home church more or it may have you speak to someone about some of the elements of this worship to the staff of your home church.

You should take the order of worship, bulletin or any other literature this church distributes back to your home church. Your own church staff will welcome seeing these if they don't think they are already at the pinnacle of churchiness. There is no hope for them if they think they can't learn from others. It makes no difference if the church you attended is smaller than your home church. You can learn from anyone.

Going to church during vacation keeps worship as an important part of your week. Logic says that it isn't that important if you can miss it for a couple of weeks without showing any difference in your life.

Sometimes we go to church to show to Whom we belong. Physical attendance is a strong reminder of this. Several times I have attended worship services in other countries where I didn't know most of what was being said. I worshiped anyway. My presence told me that I belonged to the Lord.

There are times when you may not be able to attend a church while on vacation. This past November I took a group of people to Israel. Our tour continued without regard to the day of the week. However, we did more worship during that week than we would have if we had been at home. Each day was a worship service.

You may be on a cruise and you either don't know if there is a service or it is more than a little inconvenient to attend. I believe having to attend in such circumstances is a little OCD. That is not the purpose of worship. The best thing to do in such circumstances is to read the Bible as a family and have prayer. You have still remembered your Lord without being superstitious about being in church.

Be in church on Sunday. God is expecting you.