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| Home Alone: Do We Still Need the Local Church? |
Posted: 03/17/2008
Home Alone: Do We Still
Need the Local Church?
Jim Elliff
The down-the-street local church is not the only show in town anymore. We are able to enjoy faith-building messages, listen to the latest Christian music, and explore the rich diversity and variety found in the most noted Christian gatherings, all with the click of the mouse or the touch of a button.
Many local church pastors now say, "The world is my parish," just as did the horseback-riding evangelist, John Wesley. But they mean this without ever going out of their own studio or auditorium! Some are communicating to millions.
It is not unusual for savvy web users to feed from many sources during a given week. Avid cable television viewers can watch the world's premium communicators any on almost any day! Some listen to Christian radio all day long. In fact, you can hear and see Christian leaders on your handheld media device while eating a hamburger in the local fast food restaurant.
For some time we have been losing the aura of significance once automatically assigned to the local church—the attention we had when nothing else much was going on.
We now have to face the truth—most media preachers are more engaging than those who speak in our own church, and we can watch them in our pajamas. Massive church meetings on television are so vivacious and musically stimulating that many simply lose their appetite for the "same ol' same ol'" of the regular assembly. And the church programs that once seemed so essential for spiritual vitality have become a bother to masses of declared believers, as illustrated by low levels of participation. Who really wants to be out one more night missing his favorite TV programming?
Do we really need the local church anymore?
This is not a meaningless question. Millions have written off church life as irrelevant. But some benefits are to be found in the local church that not even the best media experience can offer, such as . . .
- Actual relationships rather than imaginary ones. Weak as some churches are, they are still made up of living people who come together. The media-engrossed Christian isolates himself from other believers while imagining relationships that are actually not there. This is not living life, but skipping life. I am often saddened by the isolated person who misses out on people. There is no true fellowship except among believers. Once you know it, you will not be satisfied without it.
- Compassionate care rather than mere talk of concern. The media pastors talk about their love for their audience, but they will not be there when your child experiments with drugs, or your spouse dies, or your business goes down the drain. Those in the media audience will not sit at your bedside when you are dying. Radio preachers say they pray for you, but they really don't know you at all. Remember this: if you live alone, you die alone.
- Real accountability rather than unchecked liberty. It may not seem immediately desirable, but accountability is a precious gift. In the local church, if you stray from God, someone is there to bring you back, or even to lovingly discipline you. If you are alone, you may stray deeper and deeper into sin even though you have periodic religious media fixes. Rather, you must subject yourself to the answerability that comes from engaging with real people. If you understand the deceitfulness of sin, you know you need that.
- Authentic shared worship rather than vicarious viewing of worship. God promises benefits and blessings to corporate worship, even more so than for individual worship, though we should do both. Yet the isolated virtual Christian only imagines himself worshipping with others as he sits before the monitor. If the professing solo believer were to arrive in heaven one day, he would only then experience what he was made for when he became a believer. He will say, "How could I have missed it?"
Add to the above that the isolated media-only Christian disobeys God by not participating in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper or the corporate experience of Baptism, and that he refuses to use spiritual gifts and talents which God gave him expressly for edifying his local church, a distinct privilege and responsibility.
Do we still need the local church? Yes! But its members had better major on what makes it irreplaceable—becoming the loving, caring, worshipping, responsible fellowship it was meant to be. Your church, for instance, can be the most loving church in the world. Nothing can stop you except your own unwillingness. Love, especially in our media saturated day, is immensely attractive and satisfying.
Forget the flash and the showmanship. Don't even try to compete. Leave that to those media churches enamored with such surface concerns. They soon lose meaning to true believers anyway. Pare away all that is trifling—especially the traditions that have lost their meaning because they were only the last generation's attempts at being up-to-date. Do what is biblical even if it means changing everything. And then you will have meaning. You will be the local church that nobody can think little of anymore.
". . . not forsaking our own assembling together . . ." Hebrews 10:25
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Order Jim’s Wasted Faith on this site or at www.CCWonline.org.
Copyright © 2008 Jim Elliff
Distributed by www.ChristianWorldviewNetwork.com
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lew: :A contraian View
| Posted On: 03/21/08 08:08:15 PM |
Age 70, OR |
Understanding 1 Cor 14:23-40 as the inspired order of service frees me from the One Man Band service. I can go and submit or not.
God's way is I Cor.14:29 "Two or three prophets should speak and the others should evaluate what is said". www.NetBible.com
Pastor-centered Churches are what we have here in the West.
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Home Alone: Do we still need the local church
| Posted On: 03/19/08 07:18:00 PM |
Age 36, MI |
I definitely think we still need the local church. Whether it's located at someone's home or in a "church" building it really doesn't matter. I'm struggling right now though because I moved from another state where I had really great fellowship within the body. There were older folks, younger, and my age. The church I'm at now has wonderful, biblical teaching but, the fellowship seems a little amiss (maybe no one's really listening to the pastor?). There are clicks and, I don't seem to fit. There is some sort of wall. My husband said we can try to find another congregation but, I'm basically worn out from "visiting". I see the churches on t.v. that are in foreign countries where the believers are persecuted and see their true fellowship, how they're impacting the world around them in witness, and I would like that. They seem enthusiastic when they sing praises and attentive to the pastor, as well as, truly loving towards one another. I see lots of yawning, mouthing songs, talking, and not a lot of true fellowship in the American church today. My husband and I long for a local church, maybe we're too idealistic, where there is true fellowship, praising, and the learning of the Word. I guess the local church seems too much like a club to me where you have to fit in based on what you do, how much influence you have, what you make monetarily, how long your family has been there, if they were founders, if you fit in with the click, instead of who you are in Christ. But, in the meantime we will still go and not give up.
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The institution of church has failed
| Posted On: 03/19/08 10:44:15 AM |
Age 47, MO |
Jim: you got some great feedback coming from others, which I am happy to see. My problem with the local church is that we as a congregation feed the machine instead of each other. We go to church to check the box of Christian duty and tithe to pay the mortgage and the salaries. Full time pastorship became a lucrative career choice in sales. Ministry is a plethora of activity that centers around coffee, chocolate, baked goods, and kids activities. There is no real "one mind and Spirit" but rather programs and feel good ism's. However, this will change as America continues to slide down the slope to chaos. People will look up and to each other when looking in as proven a failure. John
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Response to "True"
| Posted On: 03/19/08 07:49:44 AM |
Age 48, AR |
You appear to confuse 'church' with a particular building or denominational structure(set aside specifically for the purpose of meeting)that believers must give their attendance support too.That is not the NT concept of church.In fact the word "ekklesia" from which we get our word "church" means nothing more than "called out".And before such structures existed Christians,more often than not,met in each others homes(See Rom16v5,Col4v15,Acts12v12 and Acts2v46)
While it is true that wayward believers may be found in almost every congregation,if the LEADERSHIP are teaching errant theology,I do not see that I am obliged to attend their church.
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Someone listens
| Posted On: 03/18/08 10:51:29 PM |
Age 45, GA |
Lou, I look at this website now and again. I want to tell you I enjoy your comments and encourage you to keep speaking His truth. I'm originally from OH. Would you share with me what area of OH you are from?
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- TO 45 GA
| Posted On: 03/20/08 01:48:57 AM | | Age 64, OH |
Thank you so much for the encouragement. Sometimes it seems as no one is listening and it is such a help to hear someone is listening. I live in Boardman which is near Youngstown and I preach at the Conservative Friends church in Salem. My email is lounewton1347@yahoo.com - Please feel free to drop me a line. I have an internet church which I write articles for. I could put you on the list if you would like. Lou
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Once upon a time
| Posted On: 03/18/08 10:28:36 PM |
Age 45, GA |
It's sad to say, but my family has recently stopped looking for a fellowship. We have been faithful church attenders and involved believers for 17 years or more. We have been involved in bible studies, community service, and supported church functions. Moving and requiring a biblically rooted, Jesus focused church has settled us in a variety of conservative congregations. It's changed. We are now outside Atlanta and everyone is overtaxed with activities and demands on their time. I have always enjoyed having families over, but getting commitment from families is difficult. Most woman just want to go eat out at a restaurant instead of bringing over a salad or dessert. I haven't bought into the "mega-church" and "entertaining programs" for quite sometime, but finding a church leadership that isn't blinded by big building and big glitzy programs is rare. We home school and I have found that we don't fit in. We think in terms of "family" and the others think in terms of "dropping off your kids". One of the last churches we tried my kids played on the playground during Sunday school. I also innocently caused a stir when I attended a girl's teen bible study with my shy daughter who welcomed me there. (No Titus women welcome) Not to go into details, my husband says only Christians eat their own. Harsh as that sounds, I have seen some pretty wicked behavior toward some of what I feel are the real Christian believers in the church. I'd love to have that fellowship that Jim talks about. At times we came close. It always seemed that each church had a few families that seemed to get the attention and were always in need or always getting help and encouragement and other families some in real need would be ignored. I asked myself if because I feed myself with the word, and listen to awesome preachers on the web, and read great books, and teach my children daily from the word, if I was getting too picky about what I expected from our local body and pastor. Maybe so. But I think it's because the body of believers are well, may I be so bold, not really knowing what being a believer means in ones life and I just wasn't fitting into the superficial go through the motion crowd anymore. For now, I enjoy our family worship. It's not what we set out to do, but it happened that way. It's a bit lonely at times, but no lonelier than standing in a room full of so called believers and finding you don't think the same about a lot of things.
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FGBMFI
| Posted On: 03/18/08 09:38:23 PM |
Age 52, GA |
As a businessman not satisfied with playing church, but wanting fellowship with other like-minded believers I joined my local chapter of the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship Intl. Rather than being bored by sermons from someone in the church business, I sought out people in business wanting to change their community and the world for Christ. Maybe there's a similar organization you can participate in your area. It would be nice if we could get away from personality driven churches wrapped around a sermonizer, and make them more group oriented for building up the believer, this doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon. Getting together for worship is great, but anyone that knows the power of the Word, usually cannot sit still for some preacher to mangle it on any given Sunday. There was/is only one perfect preacher, and He was crucified. The rest need to focus on humility, and the Word, keeping their stories, and opinions to a minimum. Many don't have the guts to speak the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but those with the itching ears keep them in business. In His service (by His grace), Porter +++
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THE CHURCH IS BUSY TAKING CARE OF ITSELF
| Posted On: 03/18/08 03:49:23 PM |
Age 64, OH |
This is very sad to say, but most all of the local churches have made themselves to be of no real value. I study the scriptures many hours every day and walk and talk with the Lord Jesus Christ all day long; but I need to talk to people and physically touch them. I went to one church for some time hoping to develop some relationships. No one really wanted to talk to me except the person assigned to talk to strangers. There was no opportunity to share in any of the meetings. When church was over every one went home and i was left the same as when I came, alone. I filled out the cards and even asked for a visit. I never got a call or a visit or an invitation from one person. The only thing I got was a offer in the mail to take their correspondence course. Like I can read the Bible without their help. I had plenty of Bibles and had read them all. I needed to talk to a human being and be able to share the gifts of the Holy Spirit I had been given. I found this a many other churches in my area to be of no real value. I attended church after church like this and found one sad story after another. I finally was invited to a little Quaker church and so went. There were only four people there the 1st time. The people there encourage me to preach and I do. The other Sunday we had 19 there. It is very small and has taken a year to develop relationships but it is place where I can share the things the Lord has shown me and I can talk with others. However this church was one in a hundred that I visited or attended. The church in this nation is in real danger. Not only do the churches NOT go out and bring in the people to Jesus; but they do not even care for the ones that Jesus sends to them. Lou
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I Agree in Part but I think it misses the mark.
| Posted On: 03/18/08 03:49:03 PM |
Age 34, ENGLAND |
Whilst I agree we should not forsake the gathering of the Saints, I think Jim's (normally excellent) article this time misses the mark.
I think there are two main reasons why people don't go to church,
1) they are not Christians,
and 2)they haven't got a good church near to them where it isn't a sin to be in.
For the most part, it is not the believers that are forsaking their local churches, but rather it's their local churches that have apostatised.
How many churches practice church discipline today?
How many churches allow the carnal practice of dating and kissing before marriage, despite Jesus clearly teaching that unrepentant lusting is a sin punishable by Hell?
How many churches practice decisional regeneration?
How many churches don't believe in Lordship Salvation?
How many churches don't know the difference between Christianity and Catholicism?
How many churches allow women in their pulpits, and give them authority over men?
How many churches have a pagan worldview when it comes to a Biblical family and Biblical manhood?
How many churches replace the role of the Father with a carnal youth pastor.
The fact is that the New Testament church which was on fire for God, quite literally, didn't even assemble in local large buildings, but met in homes.
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Home Alone: The Local Church
| Posted On: 03/18/08 10:42:34 AM |
Age 61, MO |
The advent of the telephone, followed by a wide variety of electronic technology, has certainly reduced the amount of face to face communications we have with each other. Many families no longer are as cohesive as they were just a half century ago, as children go off to college, and relatives migrate away from the home town to seek better employment opportunities. Communities are now often made up of families new to each other. The local church should make an effort to provide more than just a place for corporate worship and Bible study, but also seek to provide closer relationships with each other. Social events at the church house are not enough. Church families should invite each other into their homes on a regular basis. This is a great way to better know the hearts of our fellow Christians. As trite as it may sound: "Home is where the heart is." Needless to say, a more honest hospitality can be experienced in smaller rather than larger congregations. I believe encouragement and accountability will be enhanced by such efforts. George Cancilla
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