Why Attend Church? — The Wrong Question
In an article in the March issue of Christianity Today, p. 69, Kirsten Sanders tackles this question. With many asking why attendance at a local church matters she comments: “The instinct that God can be encountered in living rooms, in nature, and even on a TV is not wrong. The entire Christian tradition insists that God is not hindered by anything and can be near people through matter—even when conveyed by data packets to a screen. God indeed dwells with his people, gathered in homes across the world. Yet it would be incorrect also to call such a presence ‘church.’” “The concern of God in creating the church is not to form persons but to form a people.” A gathered people.
I would add to her article several other matters, including the fact that Jesus came preaching the kingdom. After his temptation, baptism by John, and then John’s imprisonment Jesus began “proclaiming good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14,15). His early followers misinterpreted that to mean that he would set up an earthly kingdom in place of Rome.
The whole New Testament explains that this was not his purpose. The kingdom comes when a sinner is born again and God, as king, through the Spirit enters into a sovereign relationship with that person. The person is transported from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. Think of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Luke explains; “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20,21).
The first Christians showed they were part of this kingdom, an earthly beachhead as it were, with specific gathered activities. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” They kept meeting together and praising God. Hebrews 10:25 explains how normative that is.
We need to realize how special we are as believers. “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people; but now you are the people of God” (1 Peter 2:9,10).
Dear friends, we are kingdom people. We represent the kingdom of God on earth until that day when Christ will return and establish his overt authority over all. Every local church is an embassy of the kingdom. We do not have a choice to go to church or not. If we have been chosen and redeemed, we have become citizens of a new country. We may be Canadians or Americans, but first and foremost we are God’s Kingdom Citizens. Should we deny our citizenship by refusing to attend a local church?
If you have worked in Bongo Bongo for a decade and the Canadian Embassy there puts on a BBQ for all its citizens would you be embarrassed to go because you disagree with some of the politics? You’d probably look forward to rubbing shoulders with fellow Canadians.
At this point many will say; but the church hurt me, my church has real flaws, or I don’t agree with the leadership, or it didn’t help me when I had a need. Or, in extreme cases, my church has fallen away from grace and become heretical. If your church has become a synagogue of Satan instead of a flawed representative of heaven, then you may have some reason to avoid it, even fight against it. BUT, that is not the case for most who avoid attending. Brothers and sisters, it is time to put away the daggers, put the hurts under the blood of Christ, and join other flawed brothers and sisters in gently, lovingly, prayerfully working to make your church a genuine place where the God of the Word, the Spirit of God, and where the Head of the Church maintains authority. Your fellow struggling saints need you! And the needs to know God has establish a beachhead on earth.
Should we look for excuses not to attend? Or excuses to go?
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