IS THE CHURCH NECESSARY FOR SALVATION?

The Saving Nature of the Body of Christ

Consider the following dialogue between a church member (CM) and a one who believes in Jesus but not the church. We will call that person a Believer but Not Belonger (B/NB)

The conversation is between friends. It is sparked by the church member declining an invitation to get together for a meal because it conflicts with a church meetingl

THE DIALOGUE

B/NB: “I’m glad I don’t have those conflicts. I acceptJesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, but I don’t believe you have to belong to a church to be a good Christian. Do you?

CM: I have personally found that it is necessary to belong. I’d be glad to explain if you are interested.

B/NB: Most of my friends are not interested in the church. I’d be intrigued to hear why you find it important.

CM: Let me tell you a story. Several years ago I talked to a man who had attended a retreat with a cultlike group. He said, “I found myself among a group of people who kept telling me that my thinking was wrong and that they loved me enough to ‘straighten me out.’ After a while, since everybody seemed to agree, and they seemed to have my best interests at heart, I began to doubt my beliefs.

What broke the spell was one night when I broke away from the group to watch a basketball game on TV. Just watching the game made me realize that their way of thinking wasn’t the only way, but just one way of thinking. “

B/NB: I’m not sure I understand.

CM: The retreat experience is a paradigm of the secular world. Advertising, stories in the media, the political climate of the day, keep banging away; with their messages of materialism, individualism, and promises of personal fulfillment. They all claim to have your best interests at heart.

At least once a week I need to step outside the spell cast by my everyday world and remember that this way of thinking and its attractions are not the whole truth. It’s not all about me or even my friends. Worship keeps me aware that people are more important than things, that community, compassion, and forgiveness are superior values to personal pleasure, winning, or being right. I need to be reminded that God cares about how we live, and corporate worship provides that alternate view of life. This regular reminder saves me from total conformity to my everyday world.

B/NB: Well, that sounds good, but I experience the church as run by bureaucrats from above and filled with hypocrites down below. I don’t get much inspiration from them.

CM: I understand how you feel. I too have certainly had my share of frustrations both with how the church operates and the failures of members in it. I once saw a sign outside a church that made me stop and think The church is full of hypocrites. You too are welcome. As I understand it, when the Lord God became human, the Divine accepted the limitations of humanness. This meant that Jesus got hungry, needed sleep, couldn’t be in several places at once, could be killed by his enemies, and could feel pain. Probably the message could have spread faster without these limitations, but becoming human was the way God chose to have Jesus spread his message through the life and witness of his followers who, from the beginning, have always been far from perfect. I don’t excuse our failures, but as I look at the world’s history I am amazed how such fallible people continually addressed by God’s word in worship have made such a difference in our world.

B/NB: You make a strong point, but God can address me with me with those same Scriptures when I read them myself, and I don’t have to associate with those hypocrites.

CM: Reading Scripture in private has an important place in a believer’s life, but the church provides a community in which to experience and intentionally practice the faith.

B/NB: But why do I have to do that among a bunch of hypocrites?

CM: Like the world, the church has its share of hypocracies. The difference is that the church invites us to respond with forgiveness and provides us with a laboratory in which to practices it. When I’m told to “love my enemy,” my obedience demands that I love the self-righteous hypocrite worshiping next to me. Sometimes I have a humbling experience when I realize that the person I judged a hypocrite was one who went out of her way to help me when I was in need.

Indeed, I find the church a challenging place in which to practice obedience to God’s commands. Sure, you can obey God anywhere, but it is so easy to escape the challenge in the larger world. In the church you hear the challenge of God’s word and immediately find an opportunity to obey it. And even when I fail, I regularly hear the words of Jesus “neither do I condemns you, go and sin no more.” I don’t know about you, but I need to hear that I am forgiven on a regular basis. It sort of restores my dignity.