WHY ATTEND CHURCH?

A man sent a letter to a newspaper, complaining that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday.

 

“I’ve gone for 30 years now,” he wrote, “and in that time I’ve heard something like 3,000 sermons. For the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them, so, I think I'm wasting my time, and pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons.”

 

That caused controversy, and the editor printed pro-and-con letters until someone wrote this:

 

“I've been married for 30 years. In that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals.

 

“But I do know this…They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!”

 

I worked four years as a part-time religion reporter for The Pilot, a newspaper in Southern Pines, NC, where my late wife, Carol, and I lived for about 28 years. While on that job, I visited some houses of worship.

 

In one church I visited, a pastor preached on Sunday morning and served communion. After the pastor said the last amen, an elderly man standing near me smiled at a lady and said, “Right on time – 12 o’clock.”

 

The Rev. Bailey Smith, former Southern Baptist Convention president, said, “Many churches are just country clubs with steeples on top.”

 

Select a church that preaches the Gospel and commit to that church if you feel you fit there. A person can live a Christian life in isolation, but that’s not normal. “You can cross the ocean in a rowboat, but it’s a lot easier to cross on a big ship with a bunch of people,” someone said.

 

Someone else said, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your brothers and sisters.”

 

“Any idea of enjoying salvation or being a Christian in isolation is foreign to New Testament writings,” someone stated.

 

St. Paul pictures the church as a body (I Corinthians 12). There is a universal Church made up of all believers, but we’re asked to belong to a local church and build up (edify) one another in that group. We are urged to confess our sins and pray for each other when we meet.

At church meetings, we should hear the Word of God preached, experience the friendship of Christians, and foster some accountability to brothers and sisters.

 

Believers should speak the truth in love and exhort each other to uphold Scriptural standards. Peer influence in church should be positive and seasoned with grace, someone said.

 

Church can be a gathering of thousands or a few people helping each other grow in Christ. Jesus says, “For where two or three gather together in my name, there am I in their midst” (Matthew 18:20).

 

We should not forsake assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another; “and all the more, as you see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25).

 

Someone said the Bible records no examples of anyone who was right with God but also stood alone and did not spend time with other believers.

 

When I wrote years ago on this subject, the late Father Tom Parsons, a former helicopter pilot in Vietnam but then pastor of Christ Church Anglican, Southern Pines, NC, wrote, “Steve, I believe the problem you discuss is due to an incomplete understanding of what the Church is. Paul, for one, believed it to be the Body of Christ on earth, and the Church, East and West, confessed this for over fifteen hundred years. … Only God knows what He will do in His prevenient grace, but Scripture, two thousand years of tradition, and our God-given reason should lead us to the covenanted way of salvation in Christ through the authority and office of His Church. To go it alone is a risky business!”