I hear many supposed Christians say that they don’t need to go to church or that they feel like they can connect to God better without church. Another idea is that they can worship God better with the extra time. Whatever the excuse that’s exactly what I hear when Christians tell me they don’t go to church; excuses. The church is the body of Christ. The church is meant to be a foretaste of the Kingdom as Leslie Newbegin said. I see going to church as practice, practice for living out the mission of God and embracing the Kingdom. I had a wrestling coach in high school that said for an action to become a habit takes muscle memory, and for muscle memory to develop the body must perform that action at least 10,000 times. 10,000 times takes a lot of practice! I coach high school wrestling and if any of my athletes showed up for matches but didn’t go to practice not only would I be disappointed and not allow them to compete, but they would lose! You can’t develop the skills of wrestling without practicing and learning about them. We make our wrestlers drill the same moves over and over for a reason…to build muscle memory. To me going to church is like building muscle memory for how to carry out God’s mission in the world and live our lives in a way that is worthy of the Kingdom. You can’t learn if you don’t practice and if you don’t practice with regularity you lose your skills. Attending and participating in a church is no different. We need to practice the things that Christ has set out for us to do and sometimes we need to be refocused on what is really important. From now on whenever a Christian tells me they don’t need the church I will tell them what I tell the high school seniors who go through the motions in practice or don’t show up at all, “You’re cheating the program, but most of all you’re cheating yourself!”
-Jack
Right on Jack, I figured that was what you were getting at, but I am glad you were able to articulate what you meant. I like your analogies, you must be a young life leader 😉 I tried the analogy thing in my blog and you inspired me to do so!
Whoops…I meant to say how to do mission.
Just to clarify, I strongly believe that mission is in the community and I think it CAN’T be done inside the church. The message of HOW to do church, the message to actually do that, should come from the church and that is the muscle memory, so to speak that I am talking about in this blog. Not that we practice mission in the church, but that in the church we learn to be missional and are encouraged to do so.
I agree with Colten, I think that a Christian practices their faith wherever they are and is encouraged in their faith thought meeting with other believers (both through worship and community(remember back to the triangle chart Rob drew in class). The parts where we practice the Kingdom of God is in the community and worship parts of the triangle, the mission side is where we are engaged with other people in kind of explaining/witnessing what is going on in the “taste of the kingdom” that is happening in the fellowship and worship. It’s important to meet as a church, therefore, both to be a collective witness and to encourage each other to go out and do mission in the community.
Jack-o, the analogy guru, haha. In all seriousness though, I am kinda seeing where you are coming from. A church should be an environment to practice your faith, but on the mission side of your faith, I feel it should be the encourager, not the place of practice. The place of practice is to be outside the church, in the community. I heard in church this last week that it takes 28 straight days of doing something for it to become a habit, just a random fact to encourage I guess.
How do we participate in church? If we had more participatory churches then I would be more likely to agree on your point. But I still don’t understand how church is practice for being in mission.
Wow, I have never heard the excuse that “I worship God better with the extra time.” What better way to worship God than to set aside time each week specifically to worship him with his people the church?! Crazy excuses.