Posts tagged Ecclesia Sundays

Seriously. I want to know why. What is it about church that makes you not go. For those of you who do go, maybe you can chime in?

It seems to me like there has been a lot of conversation lately about what is wrong with church and why we don’t go and how the system is broken, and people are Christian enough, etc., etc. However, I really am trying to get to the heart, the core of the issue. Is the Christian church as an institution really broken? Has it really made so many mistakes? Can we even answer that questions honestly and truthfully? I mean, how can we even evaluate the institution american Christianity? There is no 1 authority, or body that makes up. In fact even in my own Southern Baptist denomination there are no two churches perfectly alike. I know there are some that do things wrong and have made mistakes, and might be really toxic environments for people, but those are the outliers.

When I hear Millennials talk about church, either they love it or they hate it. But sometimes I wonder if their issue with church isn’t more a personal issue with God, or with expectations. I just don’t know. I do know that it is hard to be a part of a family, and that is what church is: a family. And it takes work to make it work, and it takes love to gloss over the bumps, but that in the end it must be worth it. Christ’s bride will be presented spotless and without blemish in God’s eyes, and that is a goal worth fighting for.

Today is Sunday. What are you doing today? If you are like most college students, then probably recovering from your hang-over, doing laundry and finally sitting down to homework. However, if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, I would strongly encourage you to consider going to church today. If you don’t have a church you go to, then I would strongly implore you to connect yourself to a local body. 

Scripture tells us that the Church is the body of Jesus Christ, and that it’s members are the all the saints and believers through-out the world, through-out the generations. The Universal Church is one body spanning the centuries and the globe. However, this universal body is made up of local manifestations, or churches. It is in this local group of believers that we get to live out the commandments of Jesus. In fact, if you carefully read the New Testament, you will see that almost all of the letters and the directives in those letters were not to individuals, but to churches. So when Paul is writing that “your body is the temple of the living God,” that is directed to an entire church body. While there may be some truth in the personal application of that, it is the body as a whole which is the true temple of the living God. God’s present in each of us as individuals, but He truly manifests Himself in the corporate gathering of the saints.

So I tell you that if you are not connected to a local body of Christ, serving and growing together with other believers, you are not only missing out on the promises and joys of the gathering, your are stunting your own spiritual growth and connection to God.

(Source: plus.google.com)