I don't have to go to church to be a Christian

By John Gardiner at www.sxc.hu

The first church I served as pastor was in Oregon.  That was quite an adjustment for me, growing up in the Appalachian Mountains.  I quickly realized that many of the folk living around my church had not grown up in church, and for some of them, their parents had not either.  “Church” had become vague, irrelevant.  Now this disconnect with church attendance is pervasive in our culture.

Let’s define these terms.  “Church” is NOT a worship service on Sunday morning.  It IS a group of believers who gather regularly for worship, study, and companionship.  Sunday morning might be a good time to find a group of believers worshiping together, studying, and sharing their lives, but it is not the only time, and church buildings are not the only place.  Here’s my thesis: the group of believers is essential to spiritual health; the traditional time and building is not.

Protestants have always had a hard time finding a solid reason for “requiring” traditional church attendance because it sounded too “Catholic.” But to prove my thesis, I’m going to pose three questions.  First,  “How can you distinguish between the human part of Jesus and the divine part?”  Obviously, it doesn’t take much theological sophistication to understand that we can’t separate Jesus in that way.  He was fully God and fully man, as the Nicene Creed has read for 1600 years.  In fact, in the great battles of the 3rd and 4th centuries over the meaning of the Christ, the Church Fathers could only recognize explanations that were inadequate.  They never found an acceptable explanation.

By Amy Burton at www.sxc.hu

Second, is the Bible a human book or a divine book?  Again, distinguishing the two is impossible (even though liberals and fundamentalists have been battering each other over the question for most of a century).  Every word of the Good Book breathes human experience: trauma, triumph, pain, hope, despair, rebellion, aspiration.  At the same time every word carries the breath of the Holy Spirit as he shows us what we are like and draws us to our Father. We can’t divide the Bible into human and divine portions any more than we can dissect Jesus.

Jesus the Word and the Written Word are part of God’s revelation of himself to this world.  Is not the Church also part of that revelation?  Remember, we are talking about “church” as a group of believers gathering regularly for worship, study, and companionship.  This is the Body of Christ, the face of Jesus, through which he ministers in the visible world.  So, third: can we say that the church is also “fully human” and “fully divine?”  The Nicene Creed does: “I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.”  “Fully human” is easy: crabby people, empire-building leadership, petty, judgmental, self-centered, smug (you can add whatever adjectives fit your experiences).   But “fully divine” is a stretch for us. Too many Western Christians have become so consumerist regarding church that they have lost all consciousness of what God is actually intending to do–and is doing–when groups of believers gather regularly for worship, study, and companionship.  What is God doing?

Other Articles of Interest:

• Defining “Relational Theology”