BIBLE NEWS: Church is Good for You

It is no surprise that pastors teach that church is good for us - that's where they work!  But now science is getting into the act to explain why the Bible teaches "not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching." - Hebrews 10:25.

Social support is no doubt part of the story. At the evangelical churches I’ve studied as an anthropologist, people really did seem to look out for one another. They showed up with dinner when friends were sick and sat to talk with them when they were unhappy. The help was sometimes surprisingly concrete. Perhaps a third of the church members belonged to small groups that met weekly to talk about the Bible and their lives...A study conducted in North Carolina found that frequent churchgoers had larger social networks, with more contact with, more affection for, and more kinds of social support from those people than their unchurched counterparts. And we know that social support is directly tied to better health.