Can you be a football player and never spend anytime on a football field?  Can you be a French chef and not go to the kitchen?  Can you be a master afghan-maker and never bless the yarn department at Wal-Mart with your presence?  Didn’t think so.  Good question, and I hear it all the time.  I heard it several weeks ago from a college student who has been having this on-going theological debate with friends and foes.
          “Can you be a Christian and not go to church?”  Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian, but that response doesn’t answer the question.  The question is “can you be a Christian and not go to church?”  The question is not “does going to church make you a Christian?”  I think most people understand that merely attending worship at a church does not make you a believer.  Since that is the case, then what is the significance of the relationship between attending worship with fellow believers (a.k.a. the church) and your personal relationship with Jesus Christ?
          The point is that people who wrestle with this question in their lives do not fully comprehend the magnitude of what being a Christian and church means.  For a lifelong learner of Jesus, this question isn’t even on the radar screen.  If you are faithful follower of Jesus, the question is not a problem for you because the question doesn’t make sense. 
          The reason it doesn’t make sense is because true believers are attracted to the church.  I’m not talking about a building that houses the church, but the people who make up the church.  If you really are a follower of Christ, then you long for fellowship.  A Christian who doesn’t “need” the family of God doesn’t make sense.  Not only does he or she not make sense, they are being selfish.  They are being selfish because they are keeping others from receiving the blessings that God would have otherwise bestowed through them in personal relationships.  Not only is he or she being selfish, they are being arrogant.  They are being arrogant because they believe they can live life without the influence and encouragement of brothers and sisters in Christ.  For those three reasons, I argue that a person who asks such a question really doesn’t get it.
          The church has many critics today within and without the church.  Secular historians doggedly blame the church for the violent wars of the crusades.   Agnostics and cynics attack the church as being hypocritical and lacking in social compassion.  Among post-moderns, the church is viewed as old, archaic, impotent and irrelevant.  There are even people today who try to separate following Jesus from being a part of the church.  These mistakenly perceive who the church is—the people of God.  And it is this group of people for whom Jesus poured out His blood, died on a Roman crucifix, and was raised from the dead.  Paul told the Ephesian elders, “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.  Be shepherds of the church of God which He bought with His own blood.”  Why is the church, the Body of Christ, so vitally connected to your experience as a follower of Jesus?  Because Jesus purchased her with His blood!

Category : Tommy Talk