Why should I go to church?

The following is an adapation of an article to be published in the Kittson County Enterprise on February 20.

Why should I go to church?

Honestly, I don’t get asked this question often, but I think it’s behind a lot of the questions I do get asked. “Why should I be in worship on Sunday morning and not at the lake cabin?” “Why does God care?” “Why does it matter?” Those are the questions I sense behind the talk of busy-ness and exhaustion, behind the excuses and guilt. It seems that every time I meet members of the churches I serve they have a laundry list of excuses for why it took so long for me to meet them. The truth is I don’t know all the ins and outs of your lives. I don’t know what feeds you and what drains you, what gives you life and what takes it away, so honestly, I'm not judging. Really, I'm just more curious than anything.

It used to be, not that long ago, that people would go to church out of a sense of duty. If you’re a regularly attending church member over the age of 55 you may very well be a part of that generation. To go to church is, for you, second nature because church is the only place you’ve ever gone on Sunday morning. You did it because your parents did it and they required you to be there in tow; they did it consequently because their parents did it and so on and so forth for generations immemorial. However, the culture has changed. No longer is church the sole center of the community. We can mourn that—and maybe we should—but it doesn’t change the fact that it is so. What’s most important is how we react.

There are so many ways to attempt to feed yourself spiritually, emotionally, and viscerally in the 21^st century. You can watch motivational speakers, read up on your favorite spiritual flavor of the month, or surf the web for countless businesses and quasi-religious institutions that are geared toward making a “better you.” Even many Christian churches and organizations are dedicated to self-fulfillment as a primary mission statement. In so many ways you are being told that it’s all about you.

But that idea flies in the face of everything Christians believe. It’s not about you. In fact, that’s the thrust behind so much of what Jesus says in the Gospels. If you want to be a disciple you have to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow (Matthew 16:24). That means admitting that you don’t have your life together and you can’t fix it and make it better by your own strength and will-power. That’s a rough thing for my generation to hear. We grew up in control of everything: from our grades to our video games to our colleges to our sports to our internet practices to our television—everything in our lives has been “on demand.” So it should be little wonder that a church preaching the exact opposite is having some trouble relating.

But that’s OK. I can hear you now saying, “Wait, what? It’s not OK. Our young adults need to be in church, just as we were, just as our parents were and all of our ancestors for as long as anybody can remember. It’s not OK to brush that legacy aside.” And, actually, you are right, though for the wrong reasons. They should be in church, but not because it’s their duty—to parents and grandparents and to the history and legacy of those who have gone before. This generation doesn’t respond to duty or being offered a single option; we’ve always had multiple options after all, and the world is filled with so many possibilities that limiting ourselves in the beginning to one seems irresponsible.

This is where the church needs to tread lightly but also be straightforward. We need to ask ourselves the questions: “What is the church about?” “What is our mission?” Is it to sustain a legacy or proclaim the gospel? Is it to bring in as many members as possible, to be a country club, or to be a mission outpost? These are serious questions before our churches today, but they are questions that every generation has faced. The cultural shifts pose an obstacle, but we need to remember that this is nothing new. Secularization may seem like an imposing enemy, but at the same time we have to remember that if what we proclaim is truth then we have nothing to fear. There’s a reason Jesus says in John’s Gospel that he is truth—that truth is not a concept but a person—and I think he says those words for this church today. We need to remember that what we cling to is Christ, not our legacy.

Finally, this is the reason why church is important. It is one of the few institutions capable of saying “no” to the culture, while admitting that this culture is no better or worse than any before. In fact, that is what we do all the time when we are being faithful to the scriptures. We say “no” to reckless consumerism, we say “no” to purposelessness and nihilism, we say “no” to the abuse and neglect of people, the environment, and our spiritual health, and we say “no” to the culture of individualism and self-sufficiency that is today’s norm. That is what the church offers to people who feel outside, who have followed the way of the world and realized finally that it leads only to death—spiritual, emotional, physical death. The church offers something no other thing does: it offers resurrection.

So, why church? Because when you live in the world long enough you understand that you need to get away from the way the world works, and this is the best way we know how.