Do We Need Church?

From Richard Lischer's book The End of Words:
“I believe the church was included in the gift both as the instrument of peace and as the laboratory in which God’s people try it out.  You might say God’s free grace comes with a kit for experimenting with it." (p. 150)


I love the image.  The Christian life involves prayer, worship, and community life together in which we receive and practice grace--and the church is that community.  


This week, I ate lunch with a group of people.  During the conversation they were asked where they went to church.  They each replied with great passion that they were very committed to God and prayed all the time, but they felt no need for church.  “If I can talk to God on my own, then why do I need to go to church?”  Conversations about our "personal" faith, our "private" faith are commonplace, even in the church.  A question is raised.  Are we truly a Christian community, open to each other, sharing with each other, holding each other accountable, or are we a gathering of individual me-and-Jesus-Christians who just happen to hang out in the same space for a short time every week. 


If we are the first...individuals sharing the same place...then really, there is no need for church.  Proclamation to the me-and-Jesus-Christian could take place on podcast at their convenience, and we could all sleep in on Sundays.  But if we gather knowing we need each other in the deepest way--to forgive each other, to be forgiven, to challenge each other, to hold each other accountable, to reach out to those not in the community--if we need each other to explore our deepest spiritual questions and struggles--if we pray with and for each other and the world as part of our very life and breath...then, then we are community and we hunger for each other, we yearn for each other, we need each other.  Then, we can't say, "I can do spirituality by myself." 

You know, we'll never be perfect in community.  We will annoy the heck out of each other.  We will nitpick and fuss and sigh and shake our heads.  We will forget to be patient.  We will be patient to a fault and allow the work of God to be slowed unnecessarily.  But church is the experiment that God left for us--the perfection has come before, shown us what is possible and what we should strive for, and stays with us in the Holy Spirit while we are slowly transformed.  And God, through God's amazing gift of the church, becomes visible to the world in some strange inexplicable way.