“God sets the lonely in families.” —Psalm 68:6a, NIV
In 2013, The New York Times ran an article about a former Methodist minister looking for a fulfilling life after giving up her faith in God.[1] “I didn’t know what life would be like without church,” she said. “There is no community. There is no social network. The majority of friendships are gone. There is no place I can go every week where I know people and they know me.”
Finding other atheists sharing her longing, Teresa McBain took a new job at Harvard as a resource person for those without faith. Her job? “Building congregations of nonbelievers.” She was essentially an atheist church planter.
“The purpose of these communities,” said a fellow chaplain, “is to help us connect to one another more deeply, to spur us to act in the interest of the common good, and to change the way we think about values and purpose in [the] world.” They gathered in groups to fight alienation, seek justice, and affirm care for the creation. Not a wholly bad description of what God intended for the church. But Christ didn’t intend for communal life together to be an “antidote to the poison of religion.” Rather, it’s a catalyst for true religion. Perhaps that is one reason why, after some troubles of her own, Teresa McBain found her way back not only to communal structures reminiscent of church, but to the God who calls us together in the first place.
Where We Share Life
When the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book about the church, he chose to title it Life Together. What a beautiful choice! Many people tend to think of the church as the place where someone is christened, married, or buried; or, as a cab driver once noted, “It’s where we get hatched, matched, and dispatched!”
But God’s image of the church is so much more: it’s where we share life together. We welcome each other’s joys and shoulder one another’s pain; we laugh and cry, rejoice and weep; give up our self-conceit and also bear each other’s burdens. We live as family, finding light in the darkness, strength for the journey, and refreshment in the dry patches of life.
Maybe that hasn’t been your experience. Maybe you can’t imagine church this way. If not, let me help you re-imagine it.
“We live as family, finding light in the darkness, strength for the journey, and refreshment in the dry patches of life.”
Church Has What You Need
True religion should be fulfilling, so God gave us the church. It has always been true that “God sets the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6a, NIV). When God placed humanity within his “very good” world, there was only one thing he declared to be “not good”: that any one person should be alone.
I heard this story many years ago. A man had not darkened the door of his local church for quite some time, so the pastor came to his house in hopes of offering some encouraging word. When the man answered the door, he offered the pastor a cold look, which made it difficult to know what phrase or sentence could possibly warm this man’s heart. Instead of speaking, the minister simply sat next to the man by the large fireplace. Without saying a word, the preacher grabbed the fireplace poker and gently moved a bright red coal away from the fire. They watched as it sat there—all alone—slowly changing in color as it cooled.
Message sent. We need each other.
Because we need each other, the church, like any healthy family, meets together for mutual edification and fellowship. The word “church” actually means “assembly.” Scripture urges us to “draw near to God” and “consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” by “not giving up meeting together” (Hebrews 10:24-25, NIV).
“Because we need each other, the church, like any healthy family, meets together for mutual edification and fellowship.”
You Have What Church Needs
True religion is interactive, so God calls both the hurting and the helpers into his fold. The church provides help, healing, and encouragement for every person in its ranks. Consider the “one another” passages that show the virtues we experience as part of the family of God.
- A place of love (John 13:34-35)
- A place of devotion (Romans 12:10)
- A place of honor (Romans 12:10)
- A life lived in harmony (Romans 12:16)
- A place without judgment (Romans 14:13)
- A place of acceptance (Romans 15:7)
- A place of instruction (Romans 15:14; Colossians 3:16)
- A place of greeting (Romans 16:16)
- A place of agreement (1 Corinthians 1:10)
- A place of encouragement (2 Corinthians 13:11)
- A place of service (Galatians 5:13)
- A place where others bear our burdens (Ephesians 4:2)
- A place of kindness and compassion (Ephesians 4:32)
- A place of mutual submission (Ephesians 5:21)
- A place of forgiveness (Colossians 3:13)
- A people called to love and mission (Hebrews 10:25)
These are not simply opportunities to receive, but also to give! Our Lord himself taught us that he did not come to be served, but to serve. That’s our pattern in life. All the blessings you can find in church are true, because God’s people use their gifts to build one another up.
“All the blessings you can find in church are true, because God’s people use their gifts to build one another up.”
God Wants What We Have
True religion is primarily about God getting what he has always wanted; so we gather as the church. Perhaps your first experience—or even your latest experience—seemed mundane and boring. Trust me. We’ve all been there. Perhaps you are there. But there is more there than meets the eye. C. S. Lewis once reflected on his own growth in appreciating the divine mystery of God’s people:
“I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems, set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on, I saw the great merit of it. . . . I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) 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.”[2]
The next time you sense a worship time with the gathered people to be a boring chore, consider this: when we gather, we join—in joyful assembly—all who belong to Christ, both past and present. We feast on the body and blood of the Lord, not only in honor of the Lord, but with the Lord. Our prayers and songs rise to the throne room of God himself and are echoed by songs of praise delivered by every creature—in heaven and on earth, irrespective of time—that gives voice to praise. It is hard to picture this moment in our minds and think less of church!
“It is hard to picture this moment in our minds and think less of church!”
The World Needs the Church
True religion blesses others, so God sends the church into the world. There is a responsibility that comes with belonging. There is a not only a glance upward, and inspection inward, but also a constant search outward. We are a people of mission and are called into the world to serve as a beacon of light for those all around us.
The people of Israel, at various times in the Hebrew Bible, forgot this important aspect of calling. Even when God chose Abraham, God clearly had a larger, wider mission in mind. He chose Abraham and his descendants—yes that is true—but in the call narrative, he specifically said that “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3, NIV). Israel was called to be something more than a cistern, housing God’s blessing for themselves alone. God called a people to be an aqueduct—a central place through which God could and would provide his blessings to the whole world (Romans 4:13). In a similar way, the church is not called to be a small outcast group held up in an outpost, clinging to the walls in hopes that Christ may soon return; we are called to be salt and light, a city set on a hill which cannot be hidden.
“We are called to be salt and light, a city set on a hill which cannot be hidden.”
One of Paul’s favorite descriptions of the church is “the body of Christ.” For Paul, Jesus is still in the neighborhood. Who Jesus is, the church is called to emulate; where Jesus went, the church is called to follow. What Jesus did, the church does. We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the world.
Why, then, the church? Because, we exist for the glory of God, to the benefit of each other, toward the betterment of the world. That is the identity and mission of the one holy, universal, apostolic church. Not simply a place where we go to be married and buried, but the locus of our “life together”—as we share in the communion of saints.
[1] Samuel G. Freedman, “After a Crisis of Faith, a Former Minister Finds a New, Secular Mission.” New York Times Sep 21, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/us/after-a-crisis-of-faith-finding-a-new-secular-mission.html?_r=0.
[2] C. S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), pp. 51-52.
