Don’t go to church.

Don’t go to church. I mean it. You shouldn’t go. In fact, you can’t. One of the greatest misunderstandings about church today is that it is a place that you go to. But take some time to read through the New Testament and you’ll quickly see that the “church” is not a location, but a group of people. You can’t go to church…you have to be the church. Church is a people, not a building. It’s an organism, not an organization. A church is people who have accepted the forgiveness Jesus offers through His death and resurrection, and have committed their lives to follow His teachings. His Spirit then lives inside them and brings them together into one body with Jesus as the head.

That has huge implications for us. Church is more about how we live than where we spend our Sunday mornings. The people of Jeremiah’s day were doing whatever they wanted and then coming to the temple and saying, “We’re safe here…” But God makes it pretty clear to them (and to us today) that places aren’t sacred. What God wants is a people who follow Him wherever they are.

"Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the LORD. This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, "This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!" If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.

--Jeremiah 7:2-8

So what's the catch? Does that mean that we can just sleep in on Sunday? People often say to me, “If I become a Christian does that mean that I have to go to church?” Here’s my response, “No, you don’t have to go to church, you have to be the church.” The honest truth is that being the church is impossible if you try to walk it alone. We were made to follow Jesus as a people. Being the church entails knowing, loving and serving each other. So it's hard to be the church without getting together with the rest of the church. The problem I am trying to address is the idea that just showing up on Sunday is enough. Jesus came to change all of your life, and all of the lives around you. He wants you to do more than just show up in a building once a week. He wants your life!