The Thing You Can Only Find at Church

There is a lot of debate and discussion going on about whether you should be in church or not. Many have undertaken the reasons why you should be church, others have countered with why you don’t need to be in church. Most use the same verses from Paul which say not to neglect meeting together or that they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching in the early church (Acts 2:42). And people go back and forth in a tennis-match-style discussion, which can turn into in an argument for or against the side you are on.

The debate as to what is church, is it a building or a body of believers is another log people throw on the church fire. But from what I have read, I have never heard any convincing argument for or against church, because it is mostly tit for tat, based on people’s preferences rather than production. One thing I have been taught, yes by my Pastor, Steve Gray, is that there are consumers and producers. People that produce are always looking for things that produce. No business owner wants to be a part of something that does not produce. And honestly, many Christians are tired of church, because they are not producing anything.

I hear both sides, and I am not here to add my two cents one way or the other, however, I am here to say there is one thing you will only find in church and that is what I want to add to the discussion, debate or downright brawl as it pertains to the subject. You can listen to sermons from many and varied preachers online; you can give money to a variety of organizations or ministries; you can pray alone or with others on a multitude of venues; you can even find community in an array of places. So, what is the one thing that you can only find in church?

Corporate worship is the one thing you can only find at church. There is nowhere else on the planet that people come together consistently, weekly or more than once a week even and sing together. You can’t find it at rock concerts or baby showers, you can sing alone in your car to the radio or join a worship service online, but there is no substitute for corporate worship. Everybody singing the same song, to the same God and the same time, this only happens at church. Pastor Dustin Smith of Dustin Smith Ministries teaches on worship and he says, “Worship is ascribing worth to God!”

As we come together as a group of believers in church and begin to worship, to ascribe worth to God, there is something that takes place in us as a group that does not happen anywhere else on the face of the earth. In my church we call it the Power of All, we all sing, we all lift our hands, we all bow, we all ascribe worth and we all experience something together that we cannot experience apart. Our God is a God of the group more so than we realize and He produces something in our lives as we come together and worship, that can only happen in that setting.

With the various challenges our world is facing, with the rise of organizations that are bent on annihilating people at any cost, more than ever, we need each other and we need God to do what only He can do in us as we enter into corporate worship.

So, you don’t have to go to church if you don’t want to, but there is one thing you will be missing in your life, because there is one thing you can only find at church.

Lisa Great, author of Divine Principles of Success, pastored a church in Malaysia. She is a minister and blogger at Mouthpiece Ministries.