Why should you come to church?
Jesus.
(There’s really no other good answer, but let’s expand on that just a bit…)
The Bible doesn’t really have a category for Christians who are not part of a local church. Salvation means being conducted into the community of God and his people. We are saved into eternal life together. (No one is saying that’s all chocolates and roses in this life!) Spirituality is fundamentally a reality of the Christian community, not just the individual. We don’t just need each other in order to grow spiritually as individual Christians; spiritual growth means growth together in the Spirit of Christ. Spiritual growth means relational growth. Jesus has accomplished our reconciliation in the Gospel, and eternity in his presence will mean the perfection of our relationships. “God is in the business of creating community” (J. B. Torrance). And no wonder—God is a Being in Community!
The church, then, is a central feature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The direct result of Christ’s atoning death on the cross was the creation of this new community, the reconciling of different persons and people groups in the one body of Christ (see Paul’s “Letter to the Ephesians”). Maybe it’s strange to our ears: “Good News! Because of Jesus, there is a church!” This will sound less strange to us as we grow in our appreciation for the grace of God seen in one another in the church. “It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s Word and sacrament” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). There is a sense in which the “most Christian” time of the week is our time together on Sundays.
So we gather as the church to participate together in Jesus’ everlasting life, shared with us as a gift of his grace primarily through his Word and Sacraments. These are often called “the Ordinary Means of Grace,” because they have been instituted by God as the normative way by which he communicates his gracious love to us for our faith. The true preaching of the Word and the right administration of the Sacraments (sometimes joined by the proper exercise of Discipline) are known by John Calvin and many in the Protestant tradition to be the distinguishing marks of the true church. With them, according to God, you have a Christian church! Without them, you don’t. If you want the assurance of faith—that you belong to God and he belongs to you—then you need exposure to the Means of Grace. In other words, come to church for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We think it’s good that certain basic, biblical things would be obvious about the environment of our church. The God we worship (the Trinity) and the way in which we worship (through faith in Jesus Christ) must be constantly prevalent and explicit—ultimately, we want to be God-centered, Christ-centered in everything we do. Communion, community, and love are very important to us. It is loving to pursue Gospel-repentance and faith in each other, and to take the message of the Gospel out into the world seeking the repentance and faith of all peoples. We testify to the coming Kingdom by living justly, compassionately, and generously. And we believe that our commitment to one another as members in the church mirrors our very commitment to Jesus Christ.
We have our bad days, to be sure. You shouldn’t expect perfection from yourself or others. But God hasn’t given up on his church. In fact, he never will. He doesn’t engage with the church because it’s always a pleasant experience for everyone. He gives himself to us because that’s just who he is. The church will always be precious to him. It’s good for you to be a part of it!
