Why should Christians go to church? How important is it?
Some people joke about the “Bedside Baptists” who attend the “Chapel of the Tube” on Sunday
mornings. But it’s more than a joke. Many people refuse to get near a church unless their neph-
ew is playing the role of a sheep in the Christmas pageant! They claim they can get more out of a
walk in the woods than from the typical sermon.
Can a Christian survive apart from a church? Some Christians have no choice. They are trapped
in a hospital bed, or working in an isolated area where no church exists. And God is certainly
sufficient to care for their needs. You can still get to heaven if you can’t go to church.
But even though it’s technically possible to live the Christian life in isolation, it’s certainly not the
norm.
When you become a Christian, you are called into a relationship with God (1 Corinthians 1:9).
But I John 1:3 makes it clear that we enter a fellowship that goes two ways: with God and with
other Christians.
The New Testament never divides Christians into the church members and the non-church
members. All the way through, it assumes that everybody participates in their local assembly.
It gives no samples of Christians who belong to the “universal church” but have no link with a
local church. One scholar has said that “any idea…of enjoying salvation or being a Christian in
isolation is foreign to the New Testament writings” (Alan Stibbs, God’s Church, p. 92). Wherever
Christians are within range of each other in the New Testament, they meet. Every time the apos-
tle Paul comes to a town in the book of Acts where there are no Christians, he wins a few con-
verts and immediately organizes them into a small group - a little church.
Acts 20:7 reveals the practice of the early church: “And upon the first day of the week, when the
disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached to them.” For Christians in every location,
regular gathering was a part of life.
It’s illogical to say that you are merely part of the worldwide, universal church, yet refuse to
gather with the segment of that universal church that exists in your geographical area. It would
be like claiming you have a car, when the right fender is in Phoenix, the engine is in Tucson, and
the wheels are in Paradise Valley! You don’t have a car; you have the beginning of the inventory
for a junkyard. It just won’t function until the pieces are put together.
The church must be together to carry out many of its purposes.
Here are some irreplaceable pieces of the Christian that cannot happen when you live in isola-
tion from the church:
8 MArch Edition