What’s the Point of Church?
What is the point of going to church? I’ll be the first to say that for most of my Christian life I did not have a good grasp on what it meant to go to church, what my role was at church and why it was significant. I remember feeling like I got nothing out of church because I didn’t get goosebumps during worship or that the message didn’t connect with me. Notice how I made church all about me. And I think this is something that is still trending in our modern day. Whether it’s contemporary worship music, sermons, books, or trends in church culture, we’re being formed as Christians into this version of Christianity that believes in the Jesus that we want. It’s become this very loose and free version of Christianity that focuses on only personal growth and individual happiness. Which are both good things, but smaller components of a much larger paradigm at play.
This trend of hyper-individualistic Christianity puts more pressure on the church to meet the needs of that individual. Yet, this only produces the seed that falls on rocky ground. We can’t fully take root unless we give up something. You may see this in your own life. Maybe you know someone that has strayed away from the faith because they’re upset with the leadership at the church or maybe they stopped going to church because they weren’t “getting much out of it.” To avoid the risk of going on a tangent, I’ll just say this: our current congregations, young and old alike, tend to complain about something and leave, rather than stick with something and be a part of the solution. I know this because I was that person at one point. That was, until I had a mentor and church leader lovingly correct my thinking.
And it’s not just that we get church wrong at times, it’s also due to the fact that we just don’t go to church anymore. According to Gallup, only 30% of professing Christians attend church every week. How’re we going to grow and develop our understanding of God and His Word if we’re not going to church?
There are so many reasons why this has happened, but I’d argue there are two things we can do to rethink how we view church. First, having a better biblical literacy. When we understand our Bibles better we understand more clearly what God has communicated to us. We learn truths, rather than frameworks we use to manipulate to then fulfill the ideals we want to believe in. And, these truths from the Bible lead us to the ways in which we are supposed to live. Second, having an understanding of church history and reading work from early church fathers can help us to grasp a better understanding of what church was like thousands of years ago. But, we also may miss out on this understanding if we aren’t attending church regularly. See where I’m going with this?
Lastly, let’s take a look at what the Bible says about church. The Bible talks a lot about the church, but these verses give us a clear idea of how we’re supposed to approach church:
1 Corinthians 12:13
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
Acts 2:42
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Notice that these two verses fail to mention anything about the individual. Both Paul and Luke evoke this sense of church as a community. “We were all baptized into one body” and “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” Church is about the body, not just the individual member. And, if we can all see church through a plural lens and not a singular one, I think we’ll see ourselves more connected to our church and actually finding more individual joy and purpose when we lay down our selfish desires to serve the body.
Jesus’ death and resurrection not only worked to appease God’s wrath over sin and death, and work as a substitutionary atonement as alluded to in the Old Testament, but also to cover us with His blood which allowed us to receive the Holy Spirit that baptized us into a new life and therefore a new community of believers living within this new covenant. And I think it’s important to highlight that this doesn’t give us an excuse to not go to church because “we are the church.” Yes, this is true and Biblicial. But, like how James calls out those who abused the concept of faith without works and used this to not do anything, we also can’t take this and use it as a reason to listen to a sermon on our phone and call it good.
I want to end with this verse from Acts that shows what a healthy church looks like. Growth is important. We want people to come to know Jesus. But, we don’t want to lower the bar to do so. That only produces the seeds on rocky ground, as I pointed to earlier. What does form disciples with deep roots is a healthy and biblical fear of the Lord, and a clear understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives and a need for a relationship with Him:
Acts 9:31
So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.
