Don't go to church
I want to recommend that you never to go to church again. Okay… it might be a good idea to explain that.
You know, the church isn’t the worship service—that’s what we offer to God. We serve Him through what we do as a community of believers. Oh, you thought that was for you? Oh, how embarrassing. No, no, no. That’s for God. The church isn’t what we do, or a building we go to on a given day of the week, it’s who we are. We could meet in a home, a garage, a backyard, a gymnasium, or a coat closet, and it would still be the church—because it’s us. The building just keeps the rain off of our hymnals.
It’s funny, because you always hear people talking about making the structure nicer, or the number of people that attended on any given Sunday or how the music sounded, or whether we liked the preaching or not. Which are okay things in and of themselves, but are they all we think about?
Sadly, I think there’s more truth to that than we like to admit. Why? Because we have a faulty understanding of what the church is. If you think it’s a building where things happen, or a service to entertain you, you will then begin to believe that the service and/or building are very, very important. Our focus will be in the wrong place.
If our focus is pointed in that direction, then the church becomes a building where things like singing and preaching happen. And that’s utterly unbiblical, and it subtly shifts the responsibility. The Church is an assembly who are worshipping and learning.
One writer said, “Popular grammar captures it well: you ‘go to church,’ much as the way you go to a store. You ‘attend’ a church, the way you attend a school or theater. You ‘belong to a church,’ much as you would a service club with its programs and activities.” He goes on to say that this kind of attitude manifests itself in people expecting the church to be a vendor of religious services and goods.”
In other words, I go to church to get my spiritual fix for the week. The church is a place and it is there for me. That kind of misunderstanding makes us say things like, “Isn’t it the church’s responsibility to do that?” or “the pastor’s responsibility,” because he “works” at the church. Do you begin to see how subtle the lie is?
You may be sitting there thinking that this is just semantics, and that I’m just nit-picking? I don’t personally think so. The Psalms reveal to us that “As a man thinks, that’s how he is.” So, to flesh out the concept—what you think about something is how you will relate to and treat that thing. So, if we think of the church as this building in which we sing, which is for our entertainment, and the sermon, which is to be our only soul food for the week, and the programs, which are to serve us and others, and be ran by the religious professionals, then we leave and believe that we’ve done our Christian duty for the week by just being there.
We come to church, and if we can come to church then, catch this, we can leave church. When 12 or 12:30 rolls around we can go back to our normal lives, having clocked in on the god-clock for the week, right? We are out of “the church” and therefore we don’t have to do “church” things. But, if we see ourselves as the church, as people who regularly meet to worship, be encouraged and learn as a community, so that we may be refreshed to go out as the church show Jesus' love to the world: that makes all the difference in the world.
One of the biggest complaints I hear from people about church is that it asks too much of their time. When the church isn’t understood in its proper context, then of course it’s going to do that. That’s because ministry has been boiled down to suppers and singings, VBS and church camp, endless meetings and programs: all so we can feel like we’re being a part of the organization. Ministry has become intertwined with the work of the building, and those buildings have become our god-headquarters where you can get all the spirituality you need for only 10% of your gross! So, yes, it becomes like our second job, or a hobby that we feel good about contributing to when we have the time.
But, when we understand the fact that those who have accepted Jesus are the Church, then we begin to understand that our very lives are our ministries. We start to take the opportunities that we have during our days to love and minister to others.
I’m not saying that programs don’t have their place, but they should never become replacements for a lifestyle of ministry, of everyday love in our lives—they should only be an extension of that. Because, if we don’t care about those with needs, it’s because we don’t see them as our mission. They don’t go to our building. They aren’t a part of our elite, social group. But, if the building’s just a bus stop as we move on to more ministry, we will begin to care about others, because the walls of that god-quarters will crumble and the whole of our world will be opened to us.
When the Bible refers to “the church in Galatia” or “the church in Jerusalem” or whatever, it’s not referring to these buildings, or an organization that represented Jesus Christ. They are saying, in effect, “the portion of the body of Christ that is gathered in this particular area.” We are the church. If we do not understand that we don’t come to church, but are the church, then I think things will stay much the way they are. The lost will go unreached, the hungry will go unfed and the sick will go uncared for.
You don’t have to be involved in every activity that our particular assembly of believers puts together. You don’t have to serve on committees to “serve the church”. Those things are somewhat important, but what’s of even more importance is that you rightly see your life for what it is. You are the church. Your life is a ministry. Everything you do, every hour and minute of every day and week is done in service to God. Each and every one of us are players in the great story of God. If you sit it out, your part of the story gets untold. You don’t fulfill who you are. Therefore, the story doesn’t suffer so much as you do. Because you aren’t who you were called to be.
So, with that said, I encourage you once more never to go to church again. Be the church.
9:00:39 PM 
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