Church People: You Can Follow Jesus Without Your Local Church...

on

I've tried SO HARD to qualify my last two posts with disclaimers that we must still follow Jesus' commands even though salvation does not depend on it, but I'm still getting corrected with Bible verses.

Keep in mind that at the moment, I'm not writing to the people who looooove church. I'm writing to Christians who have left the local church or are about to leave. If you are in love with your local church, great! For most of my life, Sunday has been the best day of the week!

And let me tell you, the most unhelpful thing you can say to someone struggling with Sunday is "but you should be meeting together." That's what a rule-follower says. What you DO is have compassion, because that's what Jesus does. He meets people where they are, in every stage of life, then loves them to a place where they want to follow him.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash


I fully expect to get slaughtered in this post, so I'll try to be very clear:

  1. Every Christian is part of the "universal church" (the body of believers all over the world).
  2. As a son or daughter of God, every Christian has agreed to follow Jesus in his or her daily life.
  3. Certain responsibilities come with this "membership" in the universal church and this daily commitment to follow Christ.
Some of these responsibilities include, in no particular order:
  • Giving
  • Serving
  • Singing 
  • Praying
  • Reading, memorizing, learning, and studying God's Word
  • MEETING TOGETHER WITH OTHER BELIEVERS (Hebrews 10:25)
(Since this is a blog post, not yet a book, I haven't looked up references to these. That's sloppy of me, but if you want proof, comment and I'll find those passages in the Bible.)

All of these things can be done with a particular local body of believers, on Sundays, at 10:00 am. You can give to the church general fund, serve in children's ministry, sing during "worship time" and say "amen" after the pastor prays on stage, listen to a sermon to learn God's Word, and, of course, sit on hard chairs next to other believers.

ALSO, all of these things can be done without a particular local body of believers.

You can donate to local charities or friends in need, serve at Union Gospel Mission, sing along to Christian radio, pray in the shower, listen to sermons online, and join a Christian Facebook group.

I hate to stop here, because I believe in most cases (even when you don't like church!) it is more beneficial to you AND to others to do the local church participation thing. 

I have a lot of reasons and disclaimers and stories to tell but that will come in future posts. I'm basically going to make every single reader disagree with me, but I've been in both the roses and the manure and I feel like I can talk about it with a some experience! So stay tuned...again...

Comments

Post a Comment