Only about half of American Christians attend church every Sunday. About a third attend church irregularly (some as little as a few times a year). And about 15% of American Christians attend church seldom or never.[1]Statistics from the Pew Research Center, https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/attendance-at-religious-services/
Apparently, many American Christians think that going to church is an optional part of being a Christian. This kind of thinking is based on the idea that the essence of being a Christian is having an individual, personal relationship with God. If the individual Christian does not feel the need to go to church in order to maintain this personal relationship, then going to church is dispensable.
This individualistic conception of Christian identity is completely false. According to the New Testament, the relationship of the individual Christian with Jesus is mediated through the Church. It is established through baptism into the visible Church community, it continues to exist because of the Christian’s participation in this community where the Holy Spirit is present, and it is facilitated by the Church’s means of grace such as the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, corporate worship, and the practice of Church discipline. Biblically, the Church stands at the center of what it means to be a Christian, and so should stand at the center of the lives of Christians.
Thus, the idea that going to church is an optional part of being a Christian is theologically absurd. In fact, the very language of “going to church” may be problematic, as it implies that the church is something external to us. Christians who have a correct understanding of their identity should recognize that the Church is not a location to which we go (or perhaps don’t go); rather, we are the Church. It is when the community of Jesus’s disciples gathers as the body of Christ around corporate worship and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper that we are who we truly are. It is from there, the center of our lives, that we then go out into the world, acting as ambassadors of the reign of King Jesus. So it might be better to speak of Christians “going to the world” rather than “going to church.”
The Moral Obligation of Worship
Most Christians, even most Christians who attend church regularly, probably would not classify the act of going to church as a morally significant act. Instead, they would consider it to be a “spiritual” or “religious” practice. However, the perspective of Christian theological ethics should make us see that regular church attendance is, in fact, an ethically significant practice.
The first basic reason that regular church attendance is an ethically significant practice is that we have a moral obligation to worship God, to reverently praise Him and to express our adoration of Him. This may be a surprising claim to many Christians. Our culture only speaks of “morality” or “ethics” in terms of our obligations to other human beings. Many Christians have absorbed and internalized this secularized moral discourse of their surrounding culture, and so do not think of their ethical obligations as including actions directed towards God. But we do have such ethical obligations.
God’s word repeatedly commands us to worship God. In the Psalms alone, there are dozens of commands to worship (29:2; 96:9; 99:5, 9; 100:2) and to praise (9:11; 22:23; 30:4; 33:2; 47:6, 7; 66:8; 68:4, 26; 96:2; 97:12; 100:4; 103:22; 105:1, 2, 45; 106:1; 113:1; 117:1; 134:1, 2; 135:1, 3, 19, 20, 21; 147:1, 7, 12; 148:1; 149:1; 150) God. If you had a friend who was a wonderful, amazing person who did something wonderful and amazing for you, and you never expressed any praise of them or their actions, it would be rude, unloving, and unethical of you. God, our Lord and Savior, is infinitely wonderful and amazing, and has given us an infinitely wonderful and amazing salvation, so we certainly have an obligation to praise and worship Him for who He is and what He has done.
If love for God stands at the center of Christian ethics, then we certainly must consider expressing our love for God through worship to be a centrally important ethical responsibility. Yes, we also indirectly express our love for God through showing love to His creation and working for its renewal. But if our relationship with God truly stands at the center of all things, then there must also be a direct channel of love between us and God, which is expressed primarily through worship.
Many people approach worship as something which they experience, asking how a worship service makes them feel. Some people feel like they are not getting anything out of the worship service, and so decide there is no reason to go. This is entirely the wrong way to approach worship. Worship is not something we experience. It is something which we offer to God. The central point is not whether we get something out of it, but whether we are genuinely offering our worship to God, as is fitting and proper for His redeemed people.
But can’t we worship God as individual Christians, without going to church? We can. But by itself, this is incomplete. We do not relate to God primarily as individual Christians; we primarily relate to God as the Church. We must have a church-centered ethic that regards the primary ethical question not as, “What should I do?” but as, “What kind of people are we becoming?” While individual worship of God has its place, it is primarily participation in the Church’s corporate worship of God that is of central ethical significance.
Besides, Christians cannot celebrate the Lord’s Supper as individuals; this can happen only during the Church’s corporate gathering. The Lord’s Supper is an essential means of grace by which we have union with Christ and remain in Him. Our regular participation in the Lord’s Supper, by which we proclaim Jesus’s death until He comes (I Cor 11:26), keeps us grounded and centered in Jesus, His cross, and the story of the Gospel.
Going to Church and Christian Character
This brings us to the second basic reason that regular church attendance is an ethically significant practice: it changes us. Six days a week, we live in a world of lies that continuously bombards us, both explicitly and implicitly, with the message that Jesus is not Lord and that God’s Kingdom is not real. Just saying that we believe in Jesus is not enough to counteract the effects of the world’s propaganda. For, at the end of the day, we are formed not by what we theoretically say we believe, but by our embodied practices and habits. By regularly gathering as the Church to worship the Lord and to partake of Jesus’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, we reorient ourselves to the truth that stands at the heart of reality: that Jesus the crucified Messiah is truly Lord, God, and Savior of the whole world.
Thus, the rhythm of weekly participation in corporate worship and the Lord’s Supper keeps us focused on Jesus, and helps to shape us into people who will live lives that align with God’s New Creation and God’s Kingdom. If the central point of Christian ethics is for us to become a people who live in light of Jesus’s cross and God’s New Creation, then this is fundamentally ethically important indeed. If we want to develop Christian virtue and live faithful lives, it is important that we prioritize regular church attendance.
Thus, going to Church should be considered a spiritual discipline. It is a practice which, over time, helps shape us into better disciples of Jesus. Like the discipline of physical exercise, and like other spiritual disciplines such as prayer, it is important that we practice Church attendance consistently and regularly, whether we feel like it or not, or we will fail to achieve the long-term benefits of it. So, if possible, go to church every Sunday, both because you have a moral obligation to worship the Lord and because it will help shape you into a better, more virtuous Chrisitan.
Notes
| ↑1 | Statistics from the Pew Research Center, https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/attendance-at-religious-services/ |
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