Skip Navigation

Back

Why We Need Church

March 02, 2023
By Gerald McDermott

Too many Christians think Sunday worship is optional. Our society’s disenchantment with organized religion has encouraged some of us to consider private prayer an acceptable substitute for corporate worship. “I can worship God better alone on a hilltop than at church,” some say.

We forget, however, that participation in regular corporate worship is one of the Ten Commandments (and that we usually don’t take the time on Sundays to worship at the hilltop, anyway). The Church has always understood “Keep the Sabbath holy” to mean that we are obliged to join together with other believers at least weekly to worship, pray, listen to the Word, and, for most of the world’s Christians, receive the sacraments.

It is also a time to build up one another. Too many of us evaluate church by what we get out of it, but the Scriptures talk more about our duties: to worship God and to “encourage one another” (Heb. 10:25).  We encourage one another by weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice, by exhorting and loving, hugging and listening, ministering the Word and receiving the Word, and simply by being present. If we think like consumers who are simply out for a bargain, how will the kingdom of God grow? Who will do the works of faith and love required to build the Church on earth? We must ask not what the Church can do for us, but what we can do for the Church.

Regular participation in worship is not only a Christian duty, however.  It is also a gift. If we decline to take the gift regularly, we will suffer in a number of ways.  First, we will lose spiritual life. The fire of a coal separated from a pile of other burning coals will soon die. So will our love for God diminish if we remove ourselves from regular participation at a local expression of the Body of Christ.  This last image is telling: as Christians, we are members of Christ’s Body (Rom. 12:4-5; Eph. 1:22-23). If we stay away from church, we are cutting ourselves off from Christ himself, whose Body is the Church.

Second, we will lose the benefit of discipline. My brothers and sisters in Christ at my church keep me accountable. When I stray from the narrow way, particularly in ways that I do not recognize, they let me know.  I am thankful for their corrections and reproofs, because they warn me when I am beginning to cut myself off from the life that feeds me.

Third, we miss out on the encouragement that comes from the rest of the Body.  We all go through dark periods when we need to be reassured that God and others still care for us.  If we are not plugged into a body of believers, we will stand alone. Barbara, a member of our church, was dying from cancer. She received enormous strength and encouragement from church members who spent time with her at the hospital and at home. But they were also refreshed and encouraged by Barbara’s shining faith. Little of this would have happened if Barbara and her friends had not been active members of a church.

Finally, we miss out on the special graces that are given through Bible-preaching and the sacraments. Using Romans 10:14-17, which suggests that Christ speaks through preachers of his Word, the great Reformers Luther and Calvin taught that the Spirit of Christ communicates through Bible preaching in a way that is different from what happens in personal Bible study. I cannot count the number of times that I have sat under Bible preaching that made a passage come alive in a way that was completely new and compelling to me, even after I had studied that same passage privately. I seemed to be hearing Jesus himself speak to my heart through the words of the preacher, even if the sermon was otherwise mediocre.

And for many Christians, corporate worship is their only time to receive communion, the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. For these believers, this is the most precious time of their week, when they receive not only the divinity but also the humanity of Christ not available to them outside the Lord’s Supper.  Because of the sacraments, they are grateful for the gift of corporate worship.

In sum, participation in a Bible-preaching and sacramental church is a duty and a gift. As in the early church, there is no other way to remain an orthodox believer.


Gerald McDermott is the Retired, Anglican Chair and Professor, Beeson Divinity College. He has authored and co-authored over 20 books. He is a Biblical scholar and an authority on Jonathan Edwards.