Why Do We Go To Church?

This is a thought I jotted down a few weeks ago and felt like posting on the old blog.  Enjoy.  

Why do we go to church?  No, seriously, why do we go to church?  That is a question I wrestle with often, and many of my friends wrestle with as well. 

Now before everyone puts on their judging hats, let me clarify.  I love church.  I love the church I attend, and I love what I see a lot of other churches doing.  But I often ask myself why I am going?  Why is it that in our American Christian culture we get up early on Sundays, grab our check books, turn off our cell phones, make awkward small talk, and listen to someone talk for an hour?

Of course the answer that I give often and that I suspect many of my friends give is simply because we want to learn more about Jesus.  Really?  What was the message on this past Sunday?  What scripture was used?  What did you take away from that experience?

Some of you no doubt are able to honestly answer each of those questions with meaningful responses, I can’t.  I know that a good friend of mine spoke.  I know that we are in a series in the Gospel of John.  But beyond that? 

I ask these questions because so often we do things for reasons we do not know.  We tell our non-Christian friends to go to church.  But what is the church?  Is it a building?  Is it a congregation?  How do non-Christians view the church?  Are their opinions that far off from reality?

The Book of Acts is probably my favorite outside of the Gospels.  The Book of Acts shows us what the church was meant to be.  It shows us how we should live our lives, the communities we should be building.  The first Christians did not live their lives how they wanted for six days and then showed up to worship God for an hour one day a week.  They were in the trenches.  They practiced what they preached.  In the Gospels Jesus and his followers were out in the trenches.  They were hanging out with the lowest of the low.  Jesus did not sit his disciples down once a week for an hour and preach and then tell them to have a good week.  He lived life with them.

We write a check every couple of weeks, awesome.  That is something that is important no doubt, but why are we writing that check?  Because God is challenging us to not idolize money or because it is something that our pastor tells us to do?  Where is our money going?  Maybe it’s buying food for hungry people, maybe it is helping to build an orphanage somewhere.  But why are we not handing out those meals, having conversations, building relationships?  I think that human interaction shows love much more than a check does.

Maybe some of us went on a mission trip for a week to Central America last summer.  That is awesome, I am not minimizing that.  Foreign missions are very important.  But what are our neighbors names?  What is going on in their lives?  How are we loving them?  Yes, when compared to the rest of the world America has wealth.  But our poor struggle as well, go to a local food pantry, those people are there for a reason.  Ask children services how many kids are in the custody of the state.  And it is not just the poor who are desperate and need Jesus and love.  Contrary to popular beliefs rich people are lonely and lost too.  So that one week in Central America is great, and I admire those who make the sacrifices to go there, but what are we doing all the weeks we are in our home towns?

These are all questions that I constantly ask myself.  And I think that if we are simply going to church on Sunday and doing a few out reach ministries a year, we are missing the point.  If we say to ourselves “I just really feel called to loving _______ people”, then we are missing something.  Yes, we all have different passions and callings, and there may be a specific group of people we feel called to, I know I have that calling in my life. But that does not mean that we get a free pass on everyone else.  We should be loving people every minute of everyday.

Church should be one small aspect of our faith.  But the other 98% of our weeks outside the church should speak loud about our faith.  So friends, if you are like me, you probably often take for granted the cross and what was done on it.  We can’t.  Remember Jesus.  And simply ask yourself, why do I go to church?