Why No One Should "Go to Church"

Is it church if no one's there?
(Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash)

Years ago I cut out a magazine article and posted it on my office door. It was written by Dan Kimball, an Emergent church pastor from California. As he starts out, he shares a story of telling a group at his church that “According to the Bible...it is actually impossible to ‘go to church.’” After letting confusion wash over their faces, he explains that in the New Testament, the word “church” never applies to a building, but always to the people who follow Jesus. “We can’t go to church,” he concludes, “because we are the church.” (Unfortunately, other than these quotes, I can't find any trace of the original article. 😞)

This is a principle that we’ve all learned (I remember singing in Sunday school, “I am the Church, you are the Church...”), but we don’t act like we have. The way we typically talk about church actually suggests that we think of “church” as the building, or, at least, as only what we do in that building. 

Instead, we need to distinguish between the church that is a static building and the church that is a people or a movement. Being an English major and a writer, I like to think of them as the "little c church" (building) and "big C Church" (the people).

The word the early Church used to describe itself in Greek is “ecclesia,” which literally means “those called out.” The Church, then, is the people who are called by God. We are called out of things and ways of living that rob us of life and joy and God’s presence, called to gather to hear the Good News of life through Christ. And we are also the people called out of our places of worship (out of our comfort zones?) to be the Church in the world and for the world.

This is why Paul says Christians are the "Body of Christ," a living, moving extension of God, instead of an unmoving building. (Or maybe an unmoving audience?) If we think church is just the building, we can think our faith and lives are as static and passive as the building. It becomes the country club (or bomb shelter) that we retreat to when we need to rest. 

One of my favorite images for the church I heard years ago at a youth gathering (I apologize that I can't credit the source), where someone said, "We too often think of church as a buffet, where we come to gorge on God and then hope we won't starve before we return; instead, we need to think of church as the grocery store where we gather the ingredients we need to make meals throughout the week."

Just as the goal of going to the grocery store is to have a dinner party, the goal of going to church (the building) is to live as Church (the people). We are "called out" as the Church not to escape from the world or hide from it, but to learn to live in it with identities, patterns, and habits that are healthy and cooked from good ingredients. 

The God of Life has called us out, called us out of death and into life, called us out of the noise and chaos the world around us to rest in (and then share) a message of hope. God calls for us to grow in that life and God calls us to share that life with others. God doesn't want us to go to church; we are called to be the Church.

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari

"May this place of rest in the fold of your journey bind you to hope. You will never walk alone." -Jars of Clay, "The Shelter"