Church is a place for real encounters with others and for true self-disclosure among other sinners. In the healthy local church, I do not fear rejection. In the healthy local church, I can pursue a spiritual depth that requires agitation, frustration, and the discomfort of being with people who conform not to “my” kingdom but to God’s. The challenge for us is to “cherish corporate worship, that most counter-cultural of practices, for which no virtual substitute can be found.”22
