Why go to church?

[Norman Barry Cope]

Why go to church?

We all need Jesus in our lives, but we do not need to regularly attend a
local church. However, the church needs us. When we have Jesus in our lives,
our Christian commitment, duty, obligation, call it what you will, will
compel us to go to church to mix with, worship with, have fellowship with,
take communion with, perhaps even work and converse with, other Christians.
We do not go to church to socialise, to necessarily help others, to be used,
nor to be noticed. Then our faith in Jesus will be carried into the church,
making the church a stronger church. I repeat, we do not need the church,
but the church needs us.
Concerning which church we should attend, using prayer, study, and the Bible
as our ultimate reference, with God's guidance we must make a decision, even
the decision not to attend. To flit from church to church, except as
visitors, as with moving from one denomination to another, must ultimately,
I believe, lead to a very unhappy, unsettled and even unspiritual lifestyle.
To be a Christian, Jesus demands that we be in this world, but not of it. I
guess ascetism was once one way to lead a totally fulfilling spiritual life,
and may still be so for those individuals, extremely rare in number, who are
drawn into an existence which is noticeably different from the majority of
us. Some saints, martyrs, and workers in the field may qualify. Knowing
their names, and reading about their activities can help us all to develop
our own spirituality, but how we conduct our own lives can only be
referenced back to God. Jesus is our guide, our inspiration, our source of
hope in this life and the one to come. No-one, nor any institution can take
His place.
So how, in our mere mortal capacity, can we choose to develop our spiritual
life when it comes to attending a church, or not, as the case may be? Should
the church be strong, so that our own spiritual life is strengthened rather
than weakened? Should it be disciplined, so that it keeps hypocracy and
unbelievers away? It must certainly keep Jesus in the forefront of its
teachings, preachings and evangelising missions. It must hold the Bible as
the ultimate authority on the Word of God - remembering that reading the
Word of God is a spiritual experience, not the sensory experience we
acquired in our early childhood which the literalists would have us believe.
These are the sorts of criteria which are bringing me to the home church
movement, building up my spiritual strength, and then, always guided by the
will of God, perhaps again joining a local church to see what I can do for
its members.
God bless, Barry AC.

[Z a n e]

Barry,

Thanks for writing. Thanks for desiring unity and most of all, to serve. What
other ng's do you post in?

Please check out the web forums at http://housechurch.org. I wish you could
enlarge upon the spiritual experience of reading God's word. There is a forum
at the "Cafe" called Revelation where such things are considered.

Thanks much, David Zane Anderson

Post by Norman Barry Cope
Why go to church?
We all need Jesus in our lives, but we do not need to regularly attend a
local church. However, the church needs us. When we have Jesus in our lives,
our Christian commitment, duty, obligation, call it what you will, will
compel us to go to church to mix with, worship with, have fellowship with,
take communion with, perhaps even work and converse with, other Christians.
We do not go to church to socialise, to necessarily help others, to be used,
nor to be noticed. Then our faith in Jesus will be carried into the church,
making the church a stronger church. I repeat, we do not need the church,
but the church needs us.
Concerning which church we should attend, using prayer, study, and the Bible
as our ultimate reference, with God's guidance we must make a decision, even
the decision not to attend. To flit from church to church, except as
visitors, as with moving from one denomination to another, must ultimately,
I believe, lead to a very unhappy, unsettled and even unspiritual lifestyle.
To be a Christian, Jesus demands that we be in this world, but not of it. I
guess ascetism was once one way to lead a totally fulfilling spiritual life,
and may still be so for those individuals, extremely rare in number, who are
drawn into an existence which is noticeably different from the majority of
us. Some saints, martyrs, and workers in the field may qualify. Knowing
their names, and reading about their activities can help us all to develop
our own spirituality, but how we conduct our own lives can only be
referenced back to God. Jesus is our guide, our inspiration, our source of
hope in this life and the one to come. No-one, nor any institution can take
His place.
So how, in our mere mortal capacity, can we choose to develop our spiritual
life when it comes to attending a church, or not, as the case may be? Should
the church be strong, so that our own spiritual life is strengthened rather
than weakened? Should it be disciplined, so that it keeps hypocracy and
unbelievers away? It must certainly keep Jesus in the forefront of its
teachings, preachings and evangelising missions. It must hold the Bible as
the ultimate authority on the Word of God - remembering that reading the
Word of God is a spiritual experience, not the sensory experience we
acquired in our early childhood which the literalists would have us believe.
These are the sorts of criteria which are bringing me to the home church
movement, building up my spiritual strength, and then, always guided by the
will of God, perhaps again joining a local church to see what I can do for
its members.
God bless, Barry AC.

[Norman Barry Cope]

Barry.
Thanks for writing. Thanks for desiring unity and most of all, to serve. What
other ng's do you post in?
Please check out the web forums at http://housechurch.org. I wish you could
enlarge upon the spiritual experience of reading God's word. There is a forum
at the "Cafe" called Revelation where such things are considered.
Thanks much, David Zane Anderson

The Bible and Christian Spirituality.

ZA has asked me to elaborate on what I mean by 'reading the Word of God is a
spiritual experience'! I do not think I can offer anything very profound,
nor unique to me, but I will make an attempt to answer the enquiry.
I have only begun to seriously read and study the Bible during the last
eight years, since I have been here in Barbados. I am 62 years old, getting
more time on my hands, but I do not read the Bible regularly even now (eg
once per day). As I look back on my life, however, I feel that in my hopes,
my fears, my dreams I have needed some sort of 'platform' on which to base
my experiences. A constant search, if you like, for a TOE ( theory of
everything, in secular terms). As a teenager and young teacher, science and
mathematics were my platforms, but deep down I felt that 'happily married
family life' would be fulfilling for me. However, in my thirties my attempts
to build that 'platform' failed (after ten years and four children). At the
same time, roughly, my reading of a little of contemporary philosophy of
science (Feyerabend) was undermining my faith in what I believed was the
objectivism of science.
I met Malvina, my wife now, in 1980 in the UK, and she has brought me to
Barbados, to her family (many of whom are Seventh Day Adventists), and
constantly brings me closer to God. In my lifelong search for a platform, I
believe this is it, and I have also arrived at the conclusion that this idea
of a platform can (should?) be applied to even the smallest of life's
experiences and actvities. One of those activites (not so small!) is
reading.
As a school teacher I have been involved in the teaching of reading
(although I am only secondary trained to teach physics), I have read
constantly throughout my life, and now recently begun to use the Internet.
When I picked up my MEd in the UK in 1993 I learnt how important it was to
be focussed in reading and study.
I hope I have now brought this short testimony around. I find the Bible is
my reading 'platform', for the more I read (on paper and on the computer
screen), and the more rambling and diverse (and contradictory) my material
becomes, I know I can come back to the Bible for stability, security and
plain common sense.
I must add a short word about spirituality. My developing spirituality is
another story, bringing me to a belief in God and faith in the testimony of
Jesus (C.S. Lewis relates a very similar experience to my own). To read the
Bible, in the terms I have tried to outline above, brings me closer to God,
because, as a result of my reading and study, it is the only book entirely
devoted to doing precisely that. It goes without saying, as far as I am
concerned, that I believe that the Bible was inspired by God. Yes, all the
words in it, whether written in english, chinese, latin, ancient greek or
hebrew have all been penned by human writers. The human characters in it are
all deficient in some way, and have axes to grind and interests vested.
Treated merely as a book of words, as the literalists do, we may equally
read Lewis, Ellen G. White, Augustine, even Mohammed, or any other ordinary
human being with all of their deficiencies. Jesus does not have any
deficiencies, and the Bible is about Him. God has given us science to
explore his world, and the Bible to get to know Him through the written
word. Reading the written words, and using our God-given intellect (no
acceptance here of chance), then the impact of the Word of God is, I
believe, that spiritual uplift I get when, as a result of prayer, reading
and study, something from the Bible answers my quest for understanding and
truth. Sometimes it is like the feeling I still get when I solve a difficult
maths problem, but not so immediate. Bible reading and Bible study is an
on-going experience for my wife and myself. We hold a Bible study class once
per week in our home. There are many books which I still might care to read,
but there is no other book with which I want to spend the rest of my life in
study and prayer.
God bless you all, Barry AC.

PS. The ng's I have recently begun to post to are this one,
alt.religion.christian.adventist, alt.talk.creationism and
christnet.theology. BAC.

[Kees Boer]

You can't "go to church" because you are the church. You can go to a church
meeting though.

Kees

[BarryAC]

Thanks Kees for re-opening this group, I though it had folded. I guess you
are referring to one of my posts. What do you think about a church, when it
holds one of its meetings, charging an entrance fee at the door? I can get a
greater spiritual experience from a good concert or film than most church
services I have ever attended. God bless, Barry AC.

[BarryAC]

Responding to your e-mail, of course we must agree on what we mean by
'church'. As a poster in alt.books.cs-lewis wrote, surely I do not mean the
church which Christ bought with His own blood? - to which I replied of
course not! No, just as you suggest, I mean any human organisation which
arranges meetings in Jesus' name. Hence my posting in this group - is it
still running? - and our (my wife and myself) reluctance to become members
of any established church (ic). Kind regards, Barry AC.