The Biblical Articles: Why the Church?

Why the church? Why isn't "individual religion" enough? Here are four suggestions as you attempt to formulate your own answer. 1. Christianity is first and last a religion of community.

Christianity without community is not Christianity; it is something else. "Individual Christianity" is a contradiction in terms. People who say, "I believe in Christianity but not churchianity" simply betray the fact that they haven't the foggiest notion what Christianity is all about.

2. The "Church" is not that ugly board building at the corner of First and Main, with those terrible windows, that terrible choir, and that even more terrible minister. Nor is it the beautiful Gothic vault downtown with lovely Gothic windows, a choir singing lovely Gothic music, a minister with a lovely Gothic voice, and a budget with a lovely Gothic debt. The Church is rather that great fellowship of men and women down through the ages, in heaven and on earth, the saints, the martyrs, the ordinary stumbling folk like us, who have committed themselves to God as he is made known in Jesus Christ, and try to live their lives in terms of that faith.

3. As a matter of historic fact, it is by means of the church that Christianity has lived and grown. Christianity could not survive in history without the ongoing community through which it is proclaimed, practiced (to a greater or lesser degree), and propagated. It is not isolated individuals who accomplish this; it is the fellowship of believers. Wherever the name of Christ is known and acknowledged today, it is because the Church has been there.

4. Christians find that their ethical concerns are strengthened by their corporate life together. As Christians do things together, they not only strengthen and undergird one another, but they also find that God himself strengthens and undergirds what they do. Gamaliel's statement to the Council in Jerusalem, when some of the first Christians were on trial, has been true ever since:

If this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it. ( Acts 5: 38, 39)

Neither will the gates of hell be able to prevail against it.