CH--CH

I grew up going to church. More correctly I grew up at church. It was the epicenter of my social world. My friends were at church, my girlfriends were at church, my family...you get the idea. I've always seen church as something I am supposed to attend because I am a Christian. I don't think so anymore. (Stay with me, this is going somewhere)

It comes down to this one question... More..."Do I have to go to church, or do I get to go to church?" (Maybe that's two questions in one.) Your answer to this question will really determine whether your church-going (or non-church going) is healthy. Let me pause here and say explicitedly that I'm not "anti-church". Here's what I want to accomplish...I want to make people think about whether they can have a successful relationship with Christ without ever entering a church building. I've looked through a lot of scripture and here's the things I've found that characterize a growing disciple of Christ...

  • Studying God's Word
  • Caring for others
  • Using spiritual gifts for the instruction and edification of others
  • Fellowship with other believers
  • Sharing Christ with everyone

Take a good look at that list and ask yourself, "Can these things be accomplished outside of the church walls?" The answer is "THEY BETTER BE!!" Otherwise there's a lot of Chinese, Japanese, African, American, Canadian, (insert nationality here) Christians that don't have a growing relationship with Christ! Paul didn't belong to a church. Jesus spent most of his time outside the synagogue. The disciples weren't on staff at churches, they were out in the world spreading the good news. They were in each other's houses learning about Christ.

I'm on staff at a church. It's easy to get roped into the idea that we as a church are providing this "service" for people on Sundays and Wednesdays. The truth is we should be teaching people how to feed themselves, not spoon-feeding 17 year old Christians every week.

The truth of the matter is we don't raise the standard at church and encourage people to dig into Scripture themselves because we're afraid people won't come back. If it's too hard, they'll just quit. There's a reason only a few disciples saw the glory of God, they didn't quit. It was hard, but they didn't quit. Moses didn't quit, David didn't quit, Abraham didn't quit, Paul didn't quit.

The other reason we don't raise the standard as church leaders is because we need to be needed. If people everywhere figured out that coming to a building didn't make them a better believer, we'd all be out of a job. If people could feed themselves, what would we do? This is no excuse!

Even as I'm writing this I know there's a whole other side of this discussion that even I agree with to a point. But that's another day.

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