When You Gather Together
In this message Pastor Josh wraps up our 2025 theme, “Abide in the King and advance the Kingdom,” and opens the door into a new year. Preaching from 1 Corinthians 11, he talks about what really happens “when you gather together” as a church, why guidelines and traditions matter, and how our house church life can either build people up or quietly tear them down. Along the way he points us back to the Lord’s Supper, exposes the dangers of cliques and factions, and announces our 2026 theme: “A Full Life in Christ.”
Imitating Christ and Keeping the Pattern
Paul begins with a confronting line: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” At first it sounds arrogant, but Pastor Josh reminds us that Paul’s authority is borrowed authority.
“Be imitators of me as I am of Christ. I only have authority because I am under His authority.”
The pulpit is not powerful because of the preacher’s personality. It is powerful because the preacher is submitted to the authority of God’s Word that has already been spoken.
Paul also commends the Corinthians for keeping the traditions he passed down. In our generation, “tradition” sounds like dead religion, but here it means patterns that have been tested and proven helpful for following Jesus.
“Tradition is not legalism. It is a repeated pattern that has proven right and can be passed on to the next generation.”
Pastor Josh connects this straight to Heartbeat Church: one pastor across three campuses, many different gatherings and house churches, but the same spirit and guidelines. Freedom is good, but freedom without a shared pattern easily drifts into everyone doing whatever feels comfortable.
He shares honestly as a pastor that:
- We have beautiful diversity in house churches: some are structured with folders and printed sheets, some are loud and chaotic with kids running everywhere, some meet almost every day.
- That diversity is a gift, but it carries a danger:
“Not all growth is good growth.”
Using his garden as an example, he talks about weeds. Weeds are alive, they grow fast, but they grow where the gardener never intended and they choke out what is healthy. In the same way, not every kind of growth in a church is good if it strangles what God actually wanted to plant.
So he revisits the basic pattern for a house church that wants to be a house church, not just a “house Christian gathering”:
- Eat together. Eating breaks down walls and opens hearts.
- Share the Word together. Not just “vibes,” but intentional Scripture and sermon-based discussion.
- Share life together. Highs and lows, real stories, open enough that non-Christians can simply be honest about where they are.
- Pray together. Including praying for children regularly so that each house church looks and feels like a “small church,” not just a social group.
“That’s why we call it house church, not house social club. It should look like a small church.”
When Gathering Does More Harm Than Good
From there, Pastor Josh moves to Paul’s shocking line in 1 Corinthians 11:
“When you come together it is not for the better but for the worse.”
Imagine Jesus looking at a house church and saying, “It would be better if you did not meet like this.” That is how serious this passage is.
Paul identifies the issue: division and factions. Division is disagreement that leads to separation. Faction is deeper. It is when we form cliques and say, “This is our group, and you are not part of it.”
“Division is disagreement and distance. Faction is when you build a castle and quietly shut people out.”
People in Corinth were saying, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Peter.” The problem was not that they loved the Word or prayer or certain leaders. The problem was using those good things as labels that separated them from others.
Pastor Josh connects this directly to Heartbeat Church:
- Villages that become “our colour” or “our culture” and unintentionally close off others.
- House churches that only ever eat with each other on Sundays, even when the whole church is gathering.
- Subtle rivalry between groups and shepherds over who is “doing better.”
He is careful not to crush the good:
“I love that you meet often. I love that you take house church seriously. But even good things become harmful when they create walls instead of welcome.”
He reminds us that eating together is biblical, but eating without love is harmful. In Corinth, the rich arrived early with plenty of food and even enough alcohol to get drunk, while the poor and slaves arrived later and found nothing left. Paul’s words are sharp:
“Do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?”
You can be doing all the “right” church activities and still hurt the body by ignoring who gets left out.
The Lord’s Supper: You Are What You Eat
In the middle of this correction, Paul brings them back to the Lord’s Supper. Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread and wine and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Pastor Josh highlights why Jesus chose food and drink:
- Our life depends on eating and drinking.
- We do it every day.
- What we eat goes into us and becomes part of us.
“You are what you eat. That is what the gospel is supposed to be. Not just information you agree with once, but Jesus in you and you in Him.”
Communion is not a box to tick. It is a picture of how the Christian life works. Christ is not something we keep outside and admire. He is the life inside us.
That is why Paul warns against taking the cup and the bread “in an unworthy manner.” Pastor Josh clarifies this:
- It does not mean you have to be sinless. No one is worthy on their own.
- It does mean you must discern the body, deal with selfishness, and care how your actions affect others.
“Gathering is good. Eating is good. But gathering without love is harmful. Eating without love is harmful.”
If we ignore God’s correction and keep living in the same selfish patterns, it leads to weakness and sickness, spiritually and sometimes even physically. Yet even then God’s heart is to discipline, not condemn, to bring us back to Him.
The Power of Waiting
Paul finishes this section with a very simple instruction:
“When you come together to eat, wait for one another.”
Pastor Josh pauses here and prays that a spirit of waiting would come upon the church.
He defines waiting like this:
“Waiting is the inconvenience of yourself for the benefit of others.”
You might have every reason to start:
- “I’m hungry.”
- “I’m ready.”
- “I know how to do this.”
But love stops and says, “If I push ahead now, who am I leaving behind?” That is what it looks like to live out the gospel, not just talk about it.
To show what this looks like in real life, he shares a story from the Abide and Advance conference in Queensland. A missionary named Stephen is moving his whole family to Japan. Heartbeat Church gave a love offering of $3,800, and then someone from the Sydney campus quietly added $15,000. This person had originally set that amount aside for kingdom work elsewhere, chose to stay and serve here, and decided to give it instead.
Later, while Stephen was ministering at another church, a man came to lunch already carrying $5,000 in his pocket. He had been having dreams about helping someone named “Stephen” and assumed it was a different pastor he knew. But at that lunch he realised that the guest speaker—also named Stephen—was the one God meant.
He asked how much had already been given and found out that someone from Heartbeat Church had given $15,000 on top of the earlier offering. Right there at the table, he sensed that God wanted Steve to leave for Japan with $50,000 in total. So instead of giving only the $5,000 he had prepared, he increased it to $35,000 to reach that amount.
Pastor Josh looks back at the original $15,000 gift and says in effect:
“Because you were willing to inconvenience yourself and obey, your seed multiplied far beyond what you could see.”
That is the power of waiting, surrender, and generosity in love.
2026: A Full Life in Christ
After correction, Pastor Josh shares the theme for 2026:
“A Full Life in Christ” (from John 10:10 – “I came that they may have life, and have it to the full.”)
He wants to confront how many of us misunderstand Christianity. We reduce it to:
- “I don’t drink.”
- “I don’t smoke.”
- “I don’t do this or that.”
But Jesus did not come mainly to give us a list of “don’ts.” He came to give us life. Eternal life that starts now and reshapes how we live here on earth.
“It’s not about doing lots of church work to impress God. I’d rather not have a church at all than have an unhealthy church full of busy but unhappy people.”
He reminds us he meant it when he said, “Your marriage is more important than the church.” Not more important than God, but more important than looking productive in ministry while your actual life falls apart. He wants to see people genuinely smiling because Jesus is their Lord and Savior, not because they are hiding behind activity.
So next year, he is inviting everyone to wrestle with one key question:
“What is the full life that God has given me in Christ?”
To make sure this is not just a nice slogan, there is a clear plan:
- Full life prayer: Everyone will take two weeks to write down their “full life” – their honest, practical prayer for the life they believe God is calling them to – and send it in. Pastor Josh and the shepherds will pray through these throughout the year.
- Coffee with Pastor Joshua: He plans to sit down one by one with people across the church to hear their stories and walk with them on this journey.
- 21 days in John: From 1 January, the whole church is invited to EMP (Early Morning Prayer) for 21 days, reading 1 chapter of John each day.
“You need Jesus to love Jesus. Just following rules on your own is religion. Inviting Jesus into your weakness and letting Him do what you cannot do is relationship.”
Conclusion: Examine, Wait, and Live Full
Pastor Josh closes in a very deliberate way: no music, no atmosphere, just silence. He asks everyone to close their eyes and have an honest, quiet conversation with God.
The final challenges land clearly:
- Examine yourself. Are you taking communion and gathering with others in a way that reflects Jesus, or in a way that quietly harms His body?
- Look at your group. Is your house church, village, or friend circle open or closed? Does it welcome people, or does it function like a private club?
- Choose to wait. Are you willing to inconvenience yourself for the sake of others, or are you building your own little kingdom inside God’s church?
“Just because you do many things for God does not mean you please God.”
As we move into 2026, the call is to let Jesus define what a full life looks like:
- A life where the gospel is not just heard on Sundays, but tasted every day.
- A life where we keep the pattern handed down to us, not as dry tradition, but as a wise path for following Jesus together.
- A life where our gatherings are not “for the worse,” but full of love, waiting, generosity, and Christ at the center.
Christianity is not simply rules. It is a relationship with the living God. And when we gather together as Heartbeat Church – in campuses, villages, and house churches – the invitation is to gather in a way that reflects His heart, waits for one another, and leads us into a full life in Christ.
