Why We Can’t Abandon the Church
5 practical reasons to connect to a local congregation
Regularly, some Christian writes a viral think piece or social media thread about how they’ve come to the realization they would be better off away from a local church.
They still love Jesus, they maintain. In fact, they are leaving the church because they love Jesus so much. The church has become crowded with man-made traditions, they say, instead of God-centered worship. Local churches fail to do so much of what Jesus called them to do.
All of that may very well be the case, but none of it deals with the very obvious point that Jesus said He was personally establishing the church.1
In multiple epistles, Paul said Christ is the head of the local church, which is His body.2 In the book of Revelation, an angel speaks of the church as the bride of Christ.3
Unless you believe divorce is the only way to improve a marriage or decapitation is the best solution for an illness, Christians should not view complete rejection of the local church as an option.4
Theologically, Christians are called to be part of a local church. Biblically, there is no such thing as a Christian living apart from the church.
When C.S. Lewis first became a Christian, he said he planned to go it alone and just read theology in his room on Sunday mornings. He found this didn’t work.
For one, church attendance is “the only way of flying your flag” to identify as a follower of Christ.5 Initially, this only caused him to be a “target” in his home. “It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to church,” he said. “It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to church, it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house.”
Secondly, Lewis said, “If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can’t do it without going to Church.”
Even beyond what Lewis said, there are very practical reasons each Christian should be actively involved in a local church.
We are meant to live in community.
Humans were created in the image of God. An aspect of being an image bearer is our need for community. Before time, God—as Trinity—existed as a community. Father, Son and Spirit had a perfect relationship.
When we separate ourselves from the church body, we are rejecting part of how we are created and how we best reflect our Creator.
Lewis described church hymns as “fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music.” Yet, at his local church, he found those hymns “were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.”
Scripture was most often written to groups.
If the Bible is our guide for how to live as a Christian, we will not grasp much of what it says if we remain a Christian outside of a local body.
Think back to the Old Testament, the prophets and other writers directed their books to entire nations, predominantly Israel. When you read the New Testament, you are mostly reading letters written to groups, frequently churches.
If we divorce ourselves from a local church, we are trying to read the Bible exclusively in a context outside of the way it was written.
Gathering with others protects us from heresy.
This flows directly from the previous point. An isolated Bible reader is experiencing the text in a way that is foreign to the original readers and is open to deviating wildly from Christian orthodoxy.
In recent years, several individuals and groups who taught that church life was no longer necessary fell into heresy and dangerous behaviors.
The Gastonguay family had to be rescued at sea after they believed God was leading them to sail in a small boat to a tiny island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They were not part of a local church.
Additionally, Harold Camping, who infamously and falsely predicted the return of Jesus in 2011, claimed we were past the “church age” and only needed his radio sermons. Coincidentally, he began claiming this after his local church challenged him concerning his teaching on the end times.
A local church is no guarantee of orthodoxy, but removing ourselves from a local church is almost always a guarantee for a life, doctrine, or both that deviate from Scripture.
Spiritual gifts are meant to be used together.
Paul tells the Corinthian believers that they are part of a body and spiritual gifts are given to individual Christians “for the common good.”6
Not only is it biblically impossible to exercise your God-given spiritual gift apart from the church, it is practically impossible. How are you going to demonstrate and exercise a spiritual gift alone? They only work in context with others.
The truth is the spiritual gift you possess is not God’s gift to you; it’s God’s gift to the local church through you.
We are connected to church history.
Christ said He would establish His church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Why remove ourselves from what Christ has founded and sustained for 2,000 years?
When we choose isolation, we are not only leaving behind the richness of a local congregation but also the depth of the church throughout history.
Gathering with the saints on a Sunday morning reminds me that I’m part of something much bigger than myself. My local church is part of a larger church that stretches around the world and through time.
With all that I’m missing by going alone, why would I ever think I could leave the church behind? Why would I ever want to?
Matthew 16:18
Ephesians 5:23, Colossians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 12:12-27
Revelation 21:9
This obviously doesn’t mean a person must remain in an abusive situation or stay in a spiritually unhealthy church. Finding safety should be the immediate concern, but long-term safety for a Christian cannot be found in isolation.
Lewis’ remarks on church attendance come from the essay “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” reprinted in God in the Dock. He also described church attendance similarly in Surprised by Joy and several letters.
1 Corinthians 12:7