IF YOU DON’T ATTEND CHURCH EVERY SUNDAY? We are doomed?

To say that we are violating Scripture unless we also “attend church” in the building of an ecclesiastical corporation with a credentialed seminary graduate in the spotlight, is simply preposterous, a remnant of Roman Catholic teaching. There is not a shred of evidence to support such an ecclesiastical requirement, and the whole of Scripture seems to go against it. The movement in the Bible is away from ceremony and limited special priesthood, and toward decentralization, an every-believer priesthood, and a return to direct communication with God through His Spirit.

Our failure as believers to implement this truth comes from our friendship with the world, and conformity thereto (Romans 12:1-2; James 4:4). It seems strange to us to think of a household communion. In our culture, Grandparents live in their own house, Aunts and Uncles are likewise separated from their Nieces and Nephews, and it is “trendy” for children to move out of their parents’ house as soon as they possibly can. In our day “the Family” has been described as one or two working parents and (maybe) 2.2 children (recently down to 1.8).

If we were to take a first-century believer (or even a modern-day member of a number of non-western cultures) up into an airplane over Southern California, and showed them city after city of single-family dwellings, all packed in like sardines, row after row, with parents in one house, children in another, grandparents in another, aunts and uncles in still another, and the poor and homeless wasting away in the abandoned section of industrial parks and urban ghettoes (where the suburban dwellers have coercively zoned them) our passenger would cry. Then he might become enraged: “This is sick! This is an abomination! I could never have imagined such atomism and selfish isolationism!” Little does he know that even among those houses where parents and children dwell together, it is little more than a motel, with students and commuters simply dropping in to sleep at night. In this land there is no property — genuine property — over which fruitful, honest dominion can be exercised unhindered by banks or landlords. It is a nation of slaves. Where in our land is an Abraham, with hundreds of adopted children, hundreds of domestic apprentices, hundreds of the poor and needy receiving shelter, hundreds of illiterate orphans being educated and brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and several generations of Family in blessed contact and harmonious community? Well, if we believe the churchmen, that ideal is clearly unattainable: we live in the New Covenant, and we do not have the Spiritual resources which Abraham had under the Old Covenant. Right?

Does Ephesians 5:19 – 6:24 command anything that cannot be fulfilled in “informal” Family-gatherings? The idea of Family communion is in our (atomistic, self-centered) day rightly ridiculed. We are not Patriarchs; we are children. How we cherish the churchmen, who only require us to “worship” in their church one day each week, and then dismiss us to watch our TV’s in isolated silence.

We should always be conscious of Christ’s Presence “where two or three are gathered in My Name.” Whenever we obey the command to assemble together for praising God, Scripture reading and study, exhortation and comfort, prayer and singing, and remembering the Lord’s death in the communal meal, we are clearly engaging in a very special activity.

Remember, the “Church” does not save anybody, only our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ can save us (John 3:17; 10:9, Acts 2:21; 4:12; 15:11; 16:31, Romans 10:9,13).