Let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Heb 10:24-5)
Lord, I thank you for the precious body of Christ, for the people with whom you have placed me, the people pray for me, and I them; who care for me, and I them; who serve me, and I them; who help me love you and trust you and live my life for you; and who work with me in the spread of your great name.
The church is a universal body of believers. It is global and has no political or economic borders. It consists of those people for whom Jesus is Lord — who have had a genuine heart response to the person and work of Jesus Christ. That is the church.
But the church is also local. Wherever genuine disciples of Jesus exist, they meet together to form a local body. That local body may be as simple as two families meeting in their homes in China or as complex as a Western megachurch. The local church is the visible expression of the universal church. The components of a local church include the following: believers meeting together regularly (at least weekly) to worship Christ, to hear the Word taught, to mutually encourage one another in the faith, to practice communion and baptism, and all under the authority of elders. Such is a local church, and such is the regular practice of believers across the globe.
But I sometimes have conversations like this:
“. . . so then, tell me. Are you a Christian?”
“Yes.”
“Where do you go to church?”
“Oh, I don’t go to church.”
Now that’s an awkward interaction. Generally I follow up with something like “Why don’t you go to church?” And I get all sorts of answers.
“I’m burned out on church . . . the people are hypocrites . . . I had a bad experience . . . I can’t find a church that suits me . . . I don’t have time . . . I have too much work . . . I don’t need the church to worship. I can praise God on my own . . . It’s boring . . . It’s shallow . . . I want something authentic.”
Whatever the reason is, it seems as if many who call themselves Christians somehow think that participation in a local church is optional. They do not get this idea from the New Testament. Here in America they likely get the idea from — well — America. We are independent. We are free. We can do what we want. We have options. This thinking is basic to America, and many in America simply transfer the thinking to the church.
Many have lost the importance of the local church and in doing so have lost something significant about Christianity. They want an individualistic Christianity. They want to pick and choose according to their desires, but Christ calls them to die to their desires.
Let’s be clear. The local church is the local expression of the universal body of Christ. It is the body of Christ where you live. If you do not participate in the body of Christ where you live, what makes you think that you participate in the body of Christ at all? For the Christian, local church participation is not an option. I don’t mean this in a legalistic sense. Belonging to a local church does not save us. Salvation is a heart issue that goes deeper than church participation. But local church participation is spiritually necessary because salvation places us in a body, and we now need to live out our corporate identity.
In the New Testament, the idea of a believer intentionally operating without respect to a local church is utterly unthinkable. Here’s why.
- Believers who intentionally stay outside the local church handicap themselves spiritually. Consider the following: a sheep without a flock, an antelope without a herd, a fish with no school. All of the above are food for predators, and Satan is a roaring lion looking for whom he may devour (I Pet 5:8). The local church helps provide protection from the Evil One. The local church provides spiritual strength, comfort, encouragement and help in the business of walking with God.
- The local church is where the one-anothers happen: love one another, bear one another’s burdens, confess your sins to one another, serve one another, be devoted to one another in love, in humility regard one another as more important than yourself, greet one another with a holy kiss, speak the truth to one another, and so on. The very word “one another” (in the Greek it is one word), is a corporate word. By definition it requires a body. In addition, the context of the one-anothers is always corporate. When the New Testament writers give the one-anothers, they are giving them to local churches. They are telling the local church how to live out its corporate life, and living out a corporate life assumes that you have a corporate life. It is difficult to have someone bear your burden when you are not around him, and it is hard to love someone with whom you spend no time. A local church is necessary to effectively carry out the commands of Scripture.
- The local church is God’s main plan for spreading the kingdom of God. If you love missions, you need to love the local church. In the New Testament, it is the local church in Antioch that sends out Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13), and when Paul sets out on his missionary journeys, he establishes local churches. In other words, the local church is both the sending agency and the main objective of missions. Missions that does not end in local churches is a failure.
Now this fact does not mean that parachurch organizations or sending agencies are somehow bad. They can bring resources together from multiple churches in order to accomplish something that no single church could accomplish. But those organizations need to understand that they do not exist merely to replicate their ministry. They exist to serve the local church, not to replace it. They may have different functions (feeding the poor, providing medical care, evangelism, translating Scripture, etc), but the purpose of those functions is to aid the local church.
In the New Testament, even when God built a team with people from different churches (Paul and Timothy, Luke or Silas), that team still functioned as a church while on the field and then worked to plant churches wherever it went. Make no mistake. The local church is Plan A for the spread of the kingdom. God can use Plan B or Plan Z if the local church won’t fulfill its responsibility, but He still wants to get back to Plan A.
These are a few reasons why God’s people are to love the local church. It is where faith takes on flesh. We are not to neglect it.
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