Why Church Matters~ Part One

His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms~ Ephesians 3:10

I recently had a conversation with a good friend, someone I respect as a person and as a Christian. She has walked through some extraordinarily challenging things in the past few years and come out the other side with her faith and testimony intact and that makes her, in my book, a woman who is worthy of great respect.

I expressed concern for my friend because I hadn’t seen her in Church much over the past months. After hearing my concerns she responded with, “Lisa, I would expect you to know by now that attending church is a dead work, and we have been saved from dead works.” Her reply got me thinking. Is she right? Is church attendance just a work and therefore optional?

Christians are leaving the church in droves. Much has been said about teens and twenty-somethings leaving church, but it’s not just youth. Adults, who have spent decades involved in Church and even Church leadership, are leaving. Some are going to organized home churches but many are simply leaving to “do their own thing” or “worship God on their own”.

 I do not deny that the Church is struggling and perhaps in need of some reforming.  I get that there are legitimate reasons why Christians are dropping out of church and I will discuss that in my next blog post. My purpose today is simply to give some biblical reasons as to why I believe church, imperfect as it is, still matters.

Church is essential because it’s the only organization Jesus left us. He could have founded universities to teach and train disciples, clubs to meet our need for relationship, a police force to keep moral order, and hospitals to care for the physically sick and emotionally broken, but instead He founded the Church (Matthew 16:18).

When the church is functioning the way it was intended it fulfills the purposes of all of the other organizations. This has a reforming effect on the culture. This is the practical aspect of becoming “salt and light” (Matthew 5:12-14).  Every time a Christian leaves the Church to “do their own thing” or turns church into nothing more than an optional exercise in corporate worship it becomes much harder for the church to fulfill its purpose in the world because the church is operating out of weakness rather than strength since it is missing another vital piece of its inner workings.

Another reason church matters is community; Christians are saved into relationship—relationship with Jesus and relationship with one another. In the early Church when a person became a believer in Jesus they became a part of the Church, within the Church was an expectation of mutual care and accountability (see Acts 2:38-47). The New Testament includes at least twenty-eight “one another” commands. Here is a small sampling…

Accept one another~ Romans 15:7

Be humble with one another~ Romans 12:16

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another~ James 5:16

Love one another~ John 13:34

Carry the burdens for one another~ Galatians 6:2

Spur one another to love and good works~ Hebrews 10:24

Teach one another~ Romans 15:14

 There are no qualifiers on these commands and each one presupposes involvement in church community and highlights the value that the Apostles placed on openness and community in the Christian life.

The community of the early Church was not a community that the individual Christians chose for themselves. It was a community of God’s choosing, which included people from every social, racial and economic demographic. This mix of cultures and races created no end of conflict in the early church. (Read 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians for examples)  

God designed Christianity to be worked out with other people, people who are just as imperfect and sinful as we are.  Church was intended to be the arena where our sinful attitudes and behaviors are revealed and our salvation is worked out through the act of mutual submission and repentance  (Ephesians 5:1).

I fear that biblical Christian community is becoming a thing of the past, replaced with homogenous Christian groups who are never obliged to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” because they all think, behave and dress the same and are quick to run to a new group of even more like-minded clones when the going gets tough.

Pastors can make leaving easy by being eager to be rid of anyone who expresses concerns or raises issues. Sometimes Pastors consciously or sub-consciously shutout congregants they see as “trouble-makers”, insuring that the person will eventually leave (or stay and become even more of a problem).

There can be a lack of reflection on the part of Pastors who are reluctant to believe that a church member, even a mature one, might have a valid concern. I have been in church leadership long enough to know that not every concern is valid or even rational nor should every concern be acted on but everyone deserves to be heard and have their concerns addressed honestly.

 Another set of issues arise when Pastors seeking new members are over-eager to welcome someone who has left another Church without first making a sincere, mature attempt to work out their conflicts biblically.  This lack of accountability discourages people from examining the role they played in the problem and stunts spiritual growth.

Next week I will discuss some of the reasons believers give for leaving Churches and hopefully encourage a deeper and more significant involvement in the community of faith God has called you to.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above~ Romans 12:10