Why We Need Church
It gives us what we cannot give ourselves.
Church is boring.
It’s sitting and listening to someone tell you what they believe is right and wrong.
It offends people who don’t want to be preached to.
It’s a bunch of old hymns written before cool music came on the scene.
It’s dress codes and people wanting to force other people to give up fun things.
It’s anti-science and anti-intellectual.
Okay. Let’s go with these as real complaints.
Here is my response.
Whatever you do not understand is automatically boring. School is boring as well. And yet, if you do not discipline yourself to sit and listen to what you do not understand at first, then you are choosing to lock yourself out of learning what might improve your future.
There is no activity, whether it is sports, or music, or science that doesn’t begin in the boring, where you first have to grasp the basics to even begin to appreciate (and enjoy) the subject or discipline.
Don’t throw and catch a baseball for hours.
Don’t dribble or shoot free throws.
Don’t run miles or lift weights.
Don’t practice scales.
Don’t memorize vocabulary.
Don’t practice spelling.
Don’t learn to read well.
Don’t study grammar.
Don’t learn basic etiquette.
Don’t study traffic rules.
Don’t take CPR.
Don’t learn to swim.
Because the fundamentals are always repetitious and, yep, b o r i n g.
Deciding that something you know nothing about is whatever you think it is at your level of initial ignorance has no particular value to anyone you might wish to convince.
This includes church critics who have never darkened the door of a church voluntarily (being dragged there as a child doesn’t count).
A better approach when wanting to learn something new is to sit and listen to those who have studied the subject a good while. Make sure you find those who love the subjects they teach. And be sure to listen and read widely in order to obtain a variety of opinions. Remember, it is not possible to be curious and bored at the same time. Choosing to have a good attitude is really what it is all about.
So, what is the benefit of attending church specifically?
The purpose of church is to equip us to understand what is good. It is to help us with your character development. So many say they don’t need church because they are saved or know God personally. This is like saying the most important room in a house is just on the other side of the front door.
A good and popular Bible verse to help put all this in perspective is Micah 6:8. (ESV)
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
At church those boring sermons should be equipping us in three ways. First, to teach us about justice - right and wrong. Second, to teach us the value of kindness, which is why we need to learn to put up with all those crazy church people. And third, to place us correctly into the world as it truly is - with us appropriately walking in humility next to the God of our hopefully growing understanding.
And there’s nothing wrong with visiting many churches to find the one that best meets your needs.