The Church Needs You and You Need the Church
Posted by Sandy in Christian Living, the churchAbout six months ago, the church Phil and I had attended for the past eight years closed when the founding pastor retired from ministry. (Sigh.) It’s hard having your family disbanded. We miss meeting together and celebrating the Lord with the friends we shared that privilege with each week.
The process of finding a new church home has given us an opportunity to see what God is doing in our community. But finding a new church is hard work. We feel like wanderers and in all honesty, as much as we love church, the temptation to sleep in on Sunday mornings and enjoy some leisure is pretty strong.
We resist most Sundays because we are committed to the local church. We’re committed to it because we believe it is God’s desire for each believer to be a part of a local fellowship. We grieve deeply at so many Christians who consider attending church optional. Writing about that will be the bulk of this blog, but first, I just want to share some random thoughts from visiting different churches over the past six months.
Random Thoughts About
- There are many pockets of people who love the Lord. Each provides their unique expression of His love.
- It’s so easy to be critical of those bodies we visit – after all, we’re evaluating each of them as a potential church home. Of course, none of them are the one we loved and can no longer attend. They don’t sing the songs we’re most familiar with. The people aren’t as loving as the ones from our church (or so it seems – I don’t really believe they are – I just don’t know them and they don’t know me so it doesn’t seem as if they are as loving as my friends). The preaching is a different style. You see, it’s so much easier to see what annoys us than to set our preferences aside and look for the good things God is doing.
I know we’re not unique in this experience. We meet for Bible study with others searching for a new home and none of us has found a home yet. It seems there is something wrong with each church we visit. Of course there is. There’s something with every church. There were things wrong with our previous church. (“Get over it – quit looking for the perfect church” my brain whispers to my heart.) - The Holy Spirit regularly reminds me that we miss a tremendous opportunity if we’re not blessing the churches we visit and we do Christ a terrible disservice when we complain about them.
- Each church we visited has at least three needs: More passion for the Lord, a stronger sense of purpose or vision, and committed believers who align themselves with that purpose or vision. The first two elements – passion for the Lord and a vision for the Church – were evident in some of the leaders, but rarely seen in the congregation.
I don’t write these things as criticism from the outside looking in. I count myself among those who need more passion for the Lord. God has been speaking to Phil and me about passion lately so I’ll be blogging about that in the future.
I grieve for the lack of vision I see in many churches, and for the lack of committed believers attending those churches.
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18a (KJV)
And where there is no vision (or revelation) of her purpose, the Church perishes. She becomes filled with people who see no purpose and become complacent in their commitment…or simply leave altogether.
The Church in America is in desperate need of revival, and none of the churches we visited is currently experiencing it. Spotty attendance by members of the congregation is a symptom of our lack of passion. We visited a number of churches whose attendance varied as much as 50% from week to week because so many people who were regular participants in the congregation prioritized other things over church. Yes, we may all do that occasionally. But for many it is not the occasional or rare re-prioritization – it seems to be a weekly decision of whether or not to join fellow believers in worship and equipping. And for still others, it has become a decision to not attend regularly simply because…well, the best I can understand is that the Church isn’t doing or being what they want it to do or be.
I understand the Church not doing or being what you want it to be. I’ve been there. As we look for a new church home, I’m there almost every Sunday. What I don’t understand is allowing that situation to override God’s Word to you:
24And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, 25not staying away from our ?worship? meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Hebrews 10:24-25 (HCSB)
Christianity Today published an article online in August titled “The Promise of Church: Reasons we must go—and keep going.” The author, Jen Pollock, brings correction in the midst of hope:
No, we don’t go to church (and keep going) because it’s easy. We go because it’s necessary…When we declared our allegiance to Jesus Christ, like it or not, we became a part of his family, binding ourselves to the domestic responsibilities to love and to serve our spiritual fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. The Apostle Paul said church is like marriage, and in my estimation, that means there’s a lot of ordinariness to it (and not too few fights). And yet, as in marriage, there is great promise of transformation in church. When we dare the difficulty of abiding the promise to love unlovable people in the everyday, we are being formed into the image of Christ.
Christianity Today; “The Promise of Church: Reasons we must go—and keep going” by Jen Pollock Michel
No, we don’t go to church and keep going because it’s easy…or because it’s fun…or because we like the worship or the preaching or the people or….we go because it’s where we meet with other believers and are challenged to live out our faith – among one another and out in the world.
As we’ve been visiting churches, God has repeatedly reminded me of a favorite verse of mine:
Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
Jonah 2:8 (NIV)
Church – that is, the gathering for worship and teaching in the format and style that most appeals to me – church, the way I want church to be – can easily become an idol that causes me to miss the grace God has for me to embrace a church with a different style and personality from what I’m accustomed. As I write this, it sounds like I am an old stick-in-the-mud church member who isn’t open to new patterns of worship and new formats. I don’t think of myself that way. I don’t want to be that person.
No, we don’t go to church because it’s easy or fun. What a blessing when it is! Easy and fun and spiritually challenging and encouraging and worshipful should be the norm. But when it’s not, we shouldn’t quit going. Nor should we immediately begin looking for a new body to align ourselves with.
For it to be acceptable for a Believer not to attend church is a thoroughly modern day perspective. For hundreds and hundreds of years after Christ, one was not considered a Christian – a Christ-follower – unless they were participating in a local fellowship of believers. Christ didn’t intend for His children to be lone rangers. We need one another. And the Church needs us. And the world needs to see us attending church.
Friends, the Body of Christ needs you to demonstrate your faith, in part, by taking the place God has set aside for you in a local church – to be a believer committed to be a part of a specific expression of the family of God. Without you, there’s a missing piece of the puzzle. There’s a body with a missing arm or leg or hand or foot. The Body of Christ needs your time and your talent, your gifts and your finances. It needs your prayers and your encouragement. It needs your faith to be added to the faith of others, and other believers need your unique contribution to fellowship. The Body of Christ needs you.
And you need the Body of Christ. You need the regular encouragement that comes from gathering with other believers. You need the regular teaching from other believers. You need the discipline that being committed to a local body brings. You need the opportunities to serve that are available through your local church. You need practice in submission, which is a natural consequence of committing to a church through good times and bad.
We don’t love church because she is always lovely. We don’t attend church because she meets our immediate needs. We go in the promise Scripture holds out, that the goodness of God’s people gathered and unified is “as precious as the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head…as refreshing as the dew from Mount Hermon that falls on the mountains of Zion. And there the Lord has pronounced his blessing, even life everlasting” (Psalm 133:2-3).
Christianity Today; “The Promise of Church: Reasons we must go—and keep going” by Jen Pollock Michel
Last but not least, the world needs you to join yourself to a local fellowship of believers. If you are a believer who is not regularly attending church, I can guarantee that there is at least one person (probably more) in your sphere of influence who is thinking and perhaps saying “Mary is a Christian and she doesn’t go to church. If she doesn’t go to church, why should I?” And perhaps there is the non-believer who is thinking “Even David quit going to church. He knows it’s just full of hypocrites. I don’t want to have any part of that.” Our actions impact those around us. Do you want your church attendance to encourage those around you to fellowship with other believers or to discourage it?
Friends, let me encourage you to be a part of the blessing described in Psalm 133 and a positive influence on those around you. Make a commitment to a local fellowship today. You, the Church and the world need you to take your place in the Body of Christ.
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