Rediscover Church (eBook)

Introduction

You may have many reasons not to go to church. Indeed, many people stopped attending during the recent pandemic—as much as one-third of churchgoers by some estimates. You may be one of them. But this book aims to help you rediscover church. Or maybe it can help you discover for the first time why God wants you to make a priority of gathering with and committing yourself to the local church.

Simply put, a Christian without a church is a Christian in trouble.

We’re long past the time when we could assume even that dedicated believers in Jesus Christ understood why they should bother with church. The number who identify as Christians is far larger than the number who attend a weekly meeting. Even then, the bulk of the serving and giving in our churches tends to be done by only a few. So it’s not as if COVID-19 suddenly convinced Christians they didn’t need church. Millions had already made that decision even before gathering involved online registration, social distancing, and masks.

COVID-19, however, accelerated the long-trending separation between personal faith and organized religion. The shutdowns caught all of us by surprise in their sudden onset and indefinite duration. And it’s hard to get back in the habit once it’s been broken for more than a year. That problem is not unique to church. Try getting back to the gym when you’ve been scared to darken the doors for months.

Resuming church attendance would be hard enough if our only problem were that a deadly disease kept us apart much longer than many expected. But fear of contracting COVID-19 might be the least of the reasons that convinced many Christians to stay away from church. Debates over masks, vaccines, and much else divided church members trapped in their homes and glued to Facebook feeds filled with dire warnings and conspiracy theories. Christians liked each other a lot more before social media. Take away the unifying experience of weekly worship together under the same roof, and the bonds of affection have frayed.

But that’s not all. Recent elections—for American readers, at least—might have been even more divisive. How can Christians worship alongside voters with such different priorities? Sure, Christians might share the same views on the Trinity, baptism, and even eschatology. But what good is that when we feel more in common with our political allies who might not even be Christians?

The same goes for the causes of racial unrest. Why can unbelieving neighbors see the solutions so clearly, we might wonder, when the couple we used to sit behind at church every week promotes such ignorant and even dangerous views in their public postings? It’s enough to make many think they could never be safe or comfortable returning to that same church.

And don’t ask about pastors. They’ve heard our complaints. Why didn’t they reach out to check on us while we were locked down at home? How did they even spend their time during the pandemic? The online sermons were lackluster, when anyone bothered to tune in while distracted by stir-crazy children. Anyway, regular pastors can’t compare to the courageous leaders who tackled the issues head-on in TV interviews and articles. Plus, the pandemic made it easier than ever before to watch other pastors’ online sermons without guilt and skip our own church. We knew that no one would ever know the difference, since we couldn’t see our pastors in person anyway.

Yes, we all have many reasons not to go back to church. In fact, many churches don’t expect us to ever come back. They’re launching virtual churches and hiring virtual pastors. No need to wake up early on Sunday. No need to put on pants. No need to search for a parking spot. No need to tune out other people’s crying babies. No need to make small talk over bad coffee with the person whose politics disgusts you. No need to stifle a yawn through a long sermon. No need to taste the bread and the wine.

A Future for the Church?

Is there a future, then, for church? Is virtual church the future? Yes and no. That’s why we aim in this book to convince you to rediscover church. We don’t do so from naivete, as if we can’t imagine why someone would struggle with the local church. In fact, anyone who loves the church must learn to forgive and forbear with Christians. God does not invite us to church because it’s a comfortable place to find a bit of spiritual encouragement. No, he invites us into a spiritual family of misfits and outcasts. He welcomes us into a home that’s rarely what we want yet just what we need.

Try to remember church before the pandemic. When you looked around the congregation gathered to sing, pray, and hear God’s Word, you might have thought everyone was happy to be there. They might have listened quietly as the pastor preached or shouted “Amen!” when they wanted to affirm a point. They might have raised their hands as the choir led in song or buried their eyes in a hymnal. They might have extended a warm handshake and a friendly hello or offered a quick “Peace be with you” before moving on.

But not everything is as it seems, even in a church full of smiles. The pandemic strained our relationships and surfaced some of the pain and fear behind the happy faces.

Behind every smile in church you’ll find a story. You’ll find a family that bickered all the way from home until they crossed the building threshold. You’ll find a widow grieving a loss that everyone else has already forgotten. You’ll find a solitary soul wrestling with doubt about God’s goodness amid a lifetime of pain and suffering. You might even find a pastor wondering how he can plead with the church to follow Jesus after a week when he so often has failed to do so himself.

From week to week in your church, you can never be quite sure how everyone feels or what everyone thinks, no matter their appearance. You can’t even be quite sure why everyone shows up. That’s why you don’t know who will come back. One person thoroughly researched various churches’ doctrinal positions before selecting the best match. Another person just needed friends in a new town. One person has bounced from congregation to congregation and never found the right fit. Another person can’t imagine any reason to leave the church where she grew up and observed every milestone of birth, marriage, and death. By appearance alone, you never can tell the full story, even in your own church.

So why would you rediscover church? What could get you out of bed again on a Sunday morning or off the couch after work on a Wednesday night? Why would you return to a particular congregation among other options? Why even bother with Christianity at all? The world hardly mourned the absence of church during the pandemic. What is it, anyway? Is it a self-help club for the mentally and emotionally weak? Is it a political action group for the like- and closed-minded? Is it a community-service organization for people who enjoy old-timey songs?

Even before the threat of deadly contagion, the church looked increasingly strange in an age when neighbors rarely gather for things like intimate discussion, quiet learning, and enthusiastic singing—especially when the subject matter comes from an ancient book about strange practices such as animal sacrifice, a book that Christians regard as having absolute authority.

What exactly happens, then, when you go to church? We don’t just mean things like the sermon, the singing, and the service (though we’ll address all those things and more in this little book). We’re talking about what happens beyond the smiles, beyond the songs, beyond the Scripture reading. We’re talking about the plans and purposes of God—because your church is much more than meets the eye. It is, in fact, the apple of God’s eye, the body for which Jesus Christ gave his body. It’s essential.

That’s why God uses the most intimate of human relationships, marriage, to explain what’s happening in your church. Teaching the church in Ephesus about marriage, the apostle Paul writes:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Eph. 5:25–27)

In this passage, Paul helps us deduce from a relationship we know, marriage, in order to understand something about the church that we cannot see. Husbands love their wives by giving up their lives. Likewise, Jesus Christ—God’s only Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, crucified by order of Rome, risen from the dead on the third day—gave himself up for the church. Through his sacrifice on the cross, he pardoned all who turn from their sin and trust him. You can be holy because Jesus gave his body. Just as you nourish and cherish your body, so Christ nourishes and cherishes his church (Eph. 5:29).

Imagine the profound mystery of Christ and the church when the old lady next to you wears too much perfume, when the guy in front of you claps on the wrong beats, and when your friend on the other end of the aisle forgets to tell you “Happy birthday!” It’s even harder to...