The church has fallen on hard times, and there’s no denying that some of the bad press has been well-earned by churches with broken leadership structures, a show-biz mentality, and pastors who prey on their congregations more than they pray for them. Even so, it’s hard to get through the New Testament without doing business with God’s intention that the Christian life is intended to be lived in community—a community of faith called the church.
Eugene Peterson spent most of his adult life as a pastor, and his studied conclusion was that “church is difficult.” Amen. Some of the most frustrating encounters of my following life could have been avoided by simply giving up on the church. Even so, Peterson asserts that “sooner or later… if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church. I say sooner.”1
At the very least, to “deal with” church, we have to show up when the church gathers. For those who have experienced church hurt, that may feel impossible, and I don’t deny the need to fall back and regroup so healing can take place. However, for most Christians who have given up on the church, the decision is more a matter of priorities, disillusionment, or dismissal.
In a busy life of earning a living, mowing the lawn, and shuttling kids to baseball games, is it possible to make a case for the relevance—even the necessity—of church attendance? I think so, and here are just three reasons:
“Sooner or later… if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church. I say sooner.” #EugenePeterson
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1. The Use of Plural Pronouns in the New Testament
I’m no Greek scholar, but those who are point to the widespread use of the plural form of you in the New Testament for commands and encouragement that we have tended to apply to individuals: 2
- “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)
- “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it…” (Philippians 1:6)
- “…“behold I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
- “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:13)
In each of these verses, the plural you refers to the Body of Christ. The Spirit dwells within the church, guides the church, will work through the church, and empowers the church. Southerners may read the plural ὑμεις as “y’all” while we Northerners would opt for “you guys,” but the point is clear: We are a colony of “aliens and strangers,” receiving divine instructions from God the Holy Spirit on how to live and work together.
2. Our Identity as Fellow Students in God’s Classroom
New Testament believers knew that they needed each other to impact their culture and would have been astonished at our present-day privatization of Christianity. We all need another pair of eyes on our circumstances. We need the faithful wounds of friends who value our good more than they value our opinion of them.
Church family serves as a web of relationships that make God tangible to us and put flesh on the unseen aspects of spiritual truth. Our brothers and sisters in Christ are fellow students in God’s classroom. As we gather in church, we are under his training.
3. Our Need for Sanctification
Church has been the influence that has pushed me, challenged me to a greater faithfulness, and stretched me outside my comfort zone. It has also been the pebble in my shoe, the sandpaper which has knocked off some of my rough edges. There’s no doubt about it: Church can be difficult.
By definition, church is the company of people who embody the ways of Jesus, both in word and in deed, throughout the world. In practice, this means doing business on the regular with people who see the world in ways that are incomprehensible to me, who utter words which make my head spin, and who do things that rub me the wrong way.
Doing church forces believers to grow up to maturity and the reward is a loving bond that advertises God’s love in large letters. We worship together, yes, but in a deep way, we walk through life with each other.
If you’ve spent any time at all participating in the life of a church family, it goes without saying that you’re carrying some hurt, some regret, or even some downright erroneous teaching. In church, we are thrown in with a group of people we did not necessarily select, and are given the command to love and to serve one another. At times we follow leaders who seem to have lost their compass.
The truth is that if God allowed me to self-select my own “perfect” church family, I’d still be cherishing all sorts of inflated notions about how godly I am, because the conflict or discomfort I’ve experienced in some church settings has been exactly the course of study I’ve needed to lead me to repentance–with the goal of becoming more like Christ.
Today, after over twenty-five years with my present church family, I am beginning to understand what it is to make a deep investment with a body of believers. Even so, I also need the wide open window of other peoples’ worship experiences and thoughts about the nature of God to remind me that being right can easily get in the way of being holy. The church is God’s gift to us, and we need one another with all our rich harmonies of expression to sing the beauty of God, which is infinitely more than one of us could ever express with our own small voice.
The church is God’s gift to us. I need the wide open window of other peoples’ worship experiences and thoughts about the nature of God to remind me that being right can easily get in the way of being holy.
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And Now Let’s Talk Books…
Cynthia Beach has created a story that couldn’t have been written before #MeToo or #ChurchToo, before the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church, or before all the ominous associations we now attach to the megachurch movement. In other words, she has written the perfect novel for our time in church history.
Twenty-five-year-old Trish Card slides like a hand in a glove into her new role as assistant to celebrity pastor Matthew Goodman. Of course, her real reason for taking the job has nothing to do with her boss’s empire-building and image-cultivating aspirations, and when this finally becomes clear to him, his world is undone.
The Surface of Water is enriched by Beach’s background in spiritual direction as her characters grapple with what it means to live authentically before God. Readers who come into the family of God from an earthly family fraught with dark secrets will be surprised to discover common ground in an unlikely place. The call to perseverance runs like a current of clear water beneath the narrative, and its source is the sure conviction that we are mightily loved by the God who loves even the smallest sparrow.
Holding you in the light,
Cynthia Beach has written a novel for this era of church history. A megachurch pastor and a young woman with a complicated backstory meet at the intersection of #churchtoo and the challenge of living authentically before God. @ivpress
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- Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010, p. 11. ↩︎
- https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/plural-you-biblical/ Article accessed on May 16, 2024 ↩︎
A New Devotional Plan for You!
As you know, I’m committed to the truth that women can become confident followers of God and students of his Word, and it’s my goal to help you along that path. At Living Our Days, I provide biblical content and resources to encourage biblical literacy and faithful living, and now I’m sharing devotional content on the YouVersion app. Visit my profile page to get free access to the reading plans!
Free Encouragement in Your Inbox!
On the third Thursday of every month, I send a newsletter with biblical encouragement straight to my subscribers’ email inboxes. Frequently, I share free resources, and the newsletter is where everything lands first. I’m committed to the truth that women can become confident followers of God and students of his Word, and I want to help you along that path.
To add this free resource to your pursuit of biblical literacy, simply CLICK HERE. There, on Substack’s website, you’ll find a prompt that looks just like this image for Living Our Days with Michele Morin. Over on that site, simply enter your email and then click on the purple “SUBSCRIBE” button.
You’ll receive a welcome letter to confirm your subscription and monthly encouragement in your email inbox.
I participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees. If you should decide to purchase any of the books or products I’ve shared, simply click on the image, and you’ll be taken directly to the seller. If you decide to buy, I’ll receive a few pennies at no extra cost to you.
Many thanks to InterVarsity Press for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.
Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash
Living Our Days 
When Christian people don’t want to go to church because of its problems, I think of Corinthians. It was fraught with issues, but Scripture never says to forsake it. I’d have trouble going to a church like it today. But thankfully, God saw it was redeemable.
I liked what Jackie Hill Perry once tweeted before she took her account down: “You know what helped heal me of my church hurt? The church.”
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Wonderful quote! I’m recording it in my journal!
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I’m so thankful for the way a church community becomes church “family” who help and encourage one another, provide examples to follow, offer wisdom and sometimes correction, pray for each other, and more. I can’t imagine where I would be without the support of church family throughout the decades of my life.
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Absolutely! Iron sharpens iron, but there’s also a lot of comfort and support coming from our church family!
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Amen! Just like our physical family, we don’t always get to choose the participants. Even as much as we love one another, relationships this side of heaven will always be difficult at times. And then again, how could we possibly persevere through the trials of life without the bond of family in Christ?
Congratulations on your YouVersion venture!!
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Well said, Lisa! Ironically, our fellow believers are the hardest part of the Christian life and, at the same time, the best part!
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