It’s also part of God’s design for how we should interact while we’re on this planet. Come to think of it, heaven is a community too.
The only one who wants us to believe that we are better off alone is our enemy.
If you really think about it, it’s actually a very clever tactic.
The church has helped even those who resent the church.
Finally, if you’re reading this article and you have any modicum of faith in Jesus, may I suggest your faith is actually the result of the mission of the church.
Very few people come to know Jesus because he appears to them supernaturally when they are alone and calls them by name.
Does that ever happen? Sure. But not to 99.9 percent of us.
Almost all of us who follow Jesus have had our lives changed by a flawed body called the church that Jesus so passionately loves and calls his own.
Think about that.
We need more church.
Do we need more churches? Yes.
Do we need more humble churches? We do.
Do you we need authentic, transparent leadership? Absolutely.
Does the church need to change? Without a doubt.
The church needs continual reformation and transformation.
So what will the future look like?
Will we gather in quite the way we do today in the future? In some ways, yes; in others, no.
Hopefully we gather more frequently and work through our differences at a deeper level and impact our communities more powerfully.
These two posts offer 10 predictions about future church attendance and 11 traits of churches that will impact the future.
But regardless of how the church gathers in the future, we will gather…we need to gather.
We Christians need each other, probably now more than ever.
And even if you don’t think you need other Christians, I promise you you do, and so does our world.
Now, more than ever, the world needs Christians working together humbly under Christ to lead people into a growing relationship with him, in whatever innovative and fresh forms that takes.
The church is not dead.
Far from it.
Maybe it’s just beginning to take shape for a brand new era that desperately needs it.
