Why Church? Thoughts As The Church Comes Back Together

Why church?

Life isn’t passive, you don’t get to sit back and watch, life requires engagement. Our world is a theatre for action. The question, therefore, is how shall we act? This is not straightforward. As Christ-followers we want to live and act in a way that is good for us now and good for us in the future. We want to live in a manner that is good for us and good for others. We want to live in a way that is honourable and pleasing to God. We want to live as the faithful representatives and the faithful worshipers we were created to be. We want to live the Sermon on the Mount.

This isn’t always easy. It especially isn’t easy in a world that can be harsh, exhausting, unpredictable, traumatic, and painful. We’re each navigating the mystery of providence, curveballs, poor choices, and dead ends, as well as of victories and achievements. Life can be all over the place, irrespective of how we act. Further, we’re living an exterior and an interior life – aligned and unaligned at times – this is a mystery too. Simultaneously, we’re trying to figure out the differences between an earthly perspective, a heavenly perspective, a temporal perspective, and an eternal perspective. That’s a trip-and-a-half. We recognise that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and we embrace Christ as our source and compass. Yet the Bible doesn’t offer us 10-steps to stress free and successful living, sure we’re offered Psalms and Proverbs, but we’re also given Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Job.

Further complicating all of this, the world is not a neutral space. Every sphere of life is a discipleship sphere, and we are continually being discipled at cross-purposes. Corporations, politicians, distorted desires, social-media, Hollywood movies, family, and friends, all work to shape the lives we live. Faith and fidelity fade, giving way to fear and false gods. Gospel surety shifts and we sell out to side-tracks and short-cuts. As Paul so bluntly but also honestly put it – oh what a wretched man I am! However, he then acknowledges the goodness of God; thanks be to God who delivers me (delivers us) through Jesus Christ our Lord! Though we fall short, miss the mark, fail to live up to the image bearing priestly vocation we were created for, God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Oh, how we need therefore, the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ broken upon the cross, heaven’s victory over sin and death. The Body of Christ in the bread and wine of communion that re-orientates wayward hearts back to the foot of the cross. The Body of Christ that is the Church of Jesus in the world. The Church which is experienced in one’s local church community of worship and of the Word, of sacrament and salvation, of mission and mutual support. Local churches that serve as a sacred space stewarding the story of Jesus, declaring the truth of the gospel, calling one another to fidelity and faithfulness, encouraging, equipping, educating, and supporting one another in the life of Christ.

The church not as a show or a performance, not an event that is always fun, exciting, titillating or even always interesting, but rather the church as a healthy and holy habit. The church as a one-another community of faith, hope and love. We commit to gathering regularly not to be entertained but to be present and attentive to God and to be present and attentive to one another – a sacred rhythm of discipleship. We gather because we need the help of the local church, an anchor point in the many complexities of life, where we are challenged and invited to be the Body of Christ to our neighbours and our neighbours to be the Body of Christ to us – brothers and sisters in the Lord. We need the local church to be a sacred place of community, worship, the word, and ongoing re-orientation. Where Scripture is read and where we are transformed by the renewing of every perspective in the life and light of Christ.

We need the local church, a creation of the Spirit, the community and communion of the saints, the people of God who have been called out of an old way of life and into the newness of God. Those who declare with Paul that, ‘it is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me.’ Those whose faith in Jesus brings them together, who are growing to become in every respect ‘the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.’

As well, we need the treasures of the broader Church, the Body of Christ in the world for the last 2,000 years. For the future of the church is not unprecedented novelty but rather, fidelity and integration. The historic faith of the Church coaching us forward into the life of Christ. We need the faith passed down by the apostles, the wisdom of the Church Fathers, the example of the Saints, the perspectives of the Great Traditions, the insights, understandings, and resources that the Church has developed as custodians of the Christian faith for two millennia.

For our faith is not a pick-a-path adventure, a two-dollar-pick-n-mix bag of lollies, or a pluralistic kaleidoscope of personal wishes. Certainly, it is an adventure, certainly it is colourful, certainly it is broad and wide, grounded and deep, but it is as ancient as it is fresh. It isn’t something we get to make up for ourselves. Any novelty will be the previously seen, seen in a new light, the overlooked rediscovered, or our own experience of that which we had not known before. Which isn’t to say that the faith of our youth, the faith of yesteryear, is the faith we hold to today. For one of the great mysteries of the Christian journey is that growth is as much about letting go as it is to holding fast. To change and become like a child, to develop a child-like-faith, takes a lot of growing up in the things of God.

Why church? Because faith and fidelity, a long obedience in the same direction, growing up in the things of God, happens in the community of the Church. Always has and always will.