There are many Christians out there who profess a 'personal faith' alone and who are not involved in any Christian community because they do not need "Church" to be close to God.
In my last article I tackled a basic issue with that ideal. That is, as followers of King Jesus we become aware of our place in the Kingdom. The Church is part of that Kingdom and if a Christian willfully refuses to be part of the 'Kingdom Community' it may actually reveal a problem in the relationship between said Christian and King Jesus.
I may be making it sound like being part of a Christian community is a rule or law that Christians have to follow. However, I assure you, like all of the designs for life that God has given us, this is not a restriction but rather a blessing. How is that you ask? I never got anything out of church, you say? Well, allow me to wow you with a few simple examples in my next article. First, let me address the last hypothetical question.
I'm not going to say anything cliché like "You only get out what you put in", although I suppose it does apply in a way, so apparently I will say something cheesy like that (more on that in the next article). What I would like to say here though is that most local manifestations of the church do not function like the community they were meant to be. That being said, in my experience there are always people and groups within each church living in recognition that they are part of the Kingdom Community (often doing so unaware of the fact), but many of the other people in said churches are consumers. A consumer could be defined as a person who wants to use programs or only comes to worship but has no desire to let Christ truly rule his or her life. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh but that appears to be the reality of the situation. Then there are the in-betweeners, people who desire more of Christ in their lives but are not sure of what that actually means or how to pursue it.
I bring this up because some of what I will describe in the next article may seem unfathomable in some churches. Many churches are not currently Kingdom focused communities, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be. And there are Kingdom focused churches out there, they may not use that language, but be sure, they exist. In short, I will not be describing utopia, just a little taste of the Kingdom on earth that is possible because the King has given us the gifts to make it happen.
(For an interesting take on the topic in general see this article by Dr. Jeffery Kloha)
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