Churchless Christians?

Writing for Christianity Today, Tim Stafford reports that more and more Christians in America do not see the importance of weekly church attendance:

The Barna Research Group reports that in the United States about 10 million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians have not been to church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter. (Barna defines “born-again” as those who say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important today, and believe they will “go to heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.”)

Nearly all born-agains say their spiritual life is very important, but for 10 million of them, spiritual life has nothing to do with church.

About a third of Americans are unchurched, according to Barna’s national data. Approximately 23 million of those—35 percent of the unchurched—claim they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their lives today.

The Church—Why Bother? goes on to make a case that the church is essential to Christian faith. Here’s part of Stafford’s argument:

The church is the body of Christ, the tangible representation of Jesus’ life on earth. As the apostle Paul wrote to the quarreling Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:21), “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’” You could sum up his message this way: “If you miss connecting to the body of Christ, you miss Christ.”

Paul allows no vague representation of the church as the sum of all Christians. The body analogy expresses Paul’s belief that Christ is available on earth in tangible form. These various gifts come in human packages. To be “in Christ” we cannot stand off distant from this body. We absolutely must serve other Christians—parts of his body—in a continuous relationship. A body part detached from other parts is clearly useless, and soon dead. It cannot experience Christ, the head of the body.

We offer perilous advice when we urge people to “find Christ” anywhere but in a local congregation. Can you imagine Paul arriving in a city, finding the local congregation not to his taste and simply staying away? For Paul, a Christian without his church is as unthinkable as a human being with no relatives. A person may quarrel with his kin, but he cannot leave them—they are his own flesh and blood. So it is with the church. And furthermore, they are Jesus’ flesh and blood.

Readers may also want to look up J.I. Packer’s Touchstone essay on the necessity of the church, A Stunted Ecclesiology?