There is no replacement for a good local church
by Steve Van Winkle
Pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church, Bozeman, MT
I was saved when I was a high school senior in Lincoln, NE, and, rarely before and never after, had I darkened the door of any church. After graduation, I managed to make it to Montana on $50 and some beef jerky.
On the verge of starvation and lodging at the recently-burned, largely uninhabitable “Why-Go-By?” hotel in Livingston, MT, my fellow adventurer (a polite term for “idiot”), Dirt, and I had made a habit of going over the mountain pass to Bozeman and eating at the Bonanza restaurant where we filled our coats with rolls and other possibles from the salad bar.
Still in its infancy, my Christianity to that point could aptly be characterized as “Jesus and Me.” If I had my Bible and a couple Christian friends, I was set; even the friends weren’t all that necessary: Jesus and Me had everything I would ever need.
Then I met a pastor.
On one of our incursions to Bonanza, Dirt and I met the founding pastor of the church I now serve. It’s a long story; suffice it to say that he was kind to a couple of 18-year-old … adventurers … and invited us to the BBF church he had started the year before.
Dirt soon lost the adventurous spirit and left for home. The preacher arranged for me to work for room and board with a young couple in church struggling to establish a horse training business. I didn’t know it at the time, but this church would become the hub of my life, and meeting this pastor was the beginning of my ecclesiastical education: I met Christ in Nebraska; I met Christianity in Montana.
My new employers and I attended our church routinely, if not regularly, and I was consistently confronted with many things I had determined unnecessary to vibrant Christianity. Soon, though, I was persuaded of the need for baptism and church membership. As if that wasn’t concession enough from me, faithful church attendance as a means of growth through instruction in doctrine and fellowship with believers was next.
Now coming more frequently, I was told a young church requires funds to keep the ministry supplied and that missionaries would have to be supported. I reconsidered the greedy church stereotype I had held and was introduced to my obligation to help send the gospel to people I would never meet. Ironically, these things and more were the very reasons I had concluded local churches to be a hindrance to vibrant faith before.
C. S. Lewis was surprised by joy; I was surprised by church. A miser of my own freedom and time, I was surprised that involving myself in people’s lives was more rewarding than the power to do what I wanted when I wanted. I was surprised I enjoyed the company of this eclectic group of Christians and by the growing warmth of strangers becoming family. Discovering purpose to life in the context of a little group of people in a tidy storefront surprised me, along with the confidence to live boldly for Christ that grew out of learning and belonging.
I thought church would be a hindrance to vibrant faith; ultimately, I was surprised that it was the very fountain that fed it with unexpected blessings.
Under the influence of my church’s ministry, the practical truth of a long-neglected term, the primacy of the local church, emerged. It means that the local church is the primary, God-ordained institution through which He accomplishes His purposes in this world. It does so not simply through the transfer of information or inviting people to be spectators, but by an up-close community that serves as both classroom and lab.
In church I learned the importance of serving in the example Jesus left us, and in church I was able to serve others. In church I learned the sanctifying value of community, and in church I was able to participate in community. In church I learned the need for accountability in both choices and growth, and in church I was able to be accountable and help others be so.
My local church brought all these and much more to my attention and then into focus and then into practice.
When I played football, we routinely received instruction on weightlifting, specifically on the need to be well rounded in targeting muscle groups. Our coaches reinforced this with stories of pitiful victims of bicepomania — a coined word referring to guys who only did arm-curls, ignored the rest of the body, and whose arms got so bulked with muscles their scrawny legs could no longer support them. The stories described a person like one who stands in front of a carnival mirror: hideously distorted, dragging themselves down the sidewalk on their massive arms while their legs scraped the pavement behind them.
It’s an apt description for what happens when Christians are left to “Jesus and Me.” If not for a local church, I would have constructed an entirely elective Christianity where I learned only about topics that interested me from people I consistently agreed with in the cocoon of fellowship with the one person I love the most (me). I would have fallen victim to spiritual bicepomania and become grossly distorted in my spiritual growth.
My church exposed the truth that “Jesus and Me” is actually religious shorthand for the “Sovereign Me,” where I decide what truth to know, who’s worthy of my company, what’s necessary to give. The more I searched and learned the Scriptures, the more I was convinced that the first primary benefit of the primacy of the local church in my life was to deliver me from the subtle poison of the Sovereign Me.
It’s been 29 years since my first service at FBC, and much has happened to the esteem and primacy of local churches. The blessing (or curse) of technology has ushered in an era of unimaginable access to treasures of biblical knowledge and teaching.
The Internet now allows us to browse limitless commentaries on our phones while we search for the perfect mate through online Christian dating sites. Streaming technology allows people to view multiple church services from the comfort of anywhere. Podcasts deliver the best sermons to multiple mobile devices and Kindle delivers the hottest books right to our hands. Want fellowship? Try the online foyer or a Christian chat room. You can even learn to pastor a church without ever leaving the basement and give to whatever ministry or church you prefer with your credit or debit card with a click or tap.
Truly, it’s a marvel — a marvel with a great many benefits to be sure. However, for all these benefits, there is one thing that makes them wholly inferior to a local, identifiable, flesh-and-blood church: We are still the Sovereign Me.
We don’t like the sermon we downloaded or clicked on a podcast? Shut it off.
We don’t like the service we’re watching online? Pick a different one, or wait till next week.
Don’t like the “wink” we got from the dating site? Press “Ignore.”
Don’t like the Kindle book? Download a new one.
Pastor of the church we “attend” online says something we don’t agree with? Give your credit card information to a different online ministry.
Find the topic in the online foyer boring or tire of the person in the chat room monopolizing the conversation? Close the browser.
Whether it’s with a click or a tap, whether in the car or office, we are able to shut down the things, topics, and people we find inconvenient, unimportant, or convicting.
Partly because of this, a frightening number of Christians today have abandoned the local church or perceive it as one resource among many equals. The effect is an epidemic of spiritual bicepomania. Christians have bulked up on the interesting teachings of favorite personalities, but have neglected what they perceive to be mundane or irrelevant.
It’s seen in believers who can quote ancient theological texts but can’t recite a prayer need in another Christian’s life; others can draw elaborate eschatological charts but have little idea how to lead someone to Christ. If you sit across the table from these elective Christians, they appear spiritually well nourished with powerful muscles; they have all the appearance of biblical health. Walk away from the table and their wobbly legs will be evident and their core muscles will strain to hold their torso steady.
The ministry of the local church was ordained of God to combat this very kind of imbalance. By placing believers in a culture where topics can’t be chosen by personal interest, sermons can’t be shut down, and people can’t conveniently be ignored with a click, the church is uniquely crafted to be the primary vehicle through which God grows a balanced people. In church, we are confronted with what is good for us, not what sounds good to us.
The local church is a unique community that can’t be shut down by preference or discomfort and that does not suffer anonymity. The surprising discovery for believers who commit to and invest in it is that the very mundanities and irrelevancies we have scrupulously avoided are the irreplaceable building blocks of life and faith.
Truly, we are surprised by church and that its primacy is the lifeblood of a satisfying Christian joy.