Going to church.............

It's sad that so many churches are like this. As Christians we need to remember that the Church is people, that if all the buildings were boarded up, all the cathedrals torn down, all the preists and "church leaders" rounded up and shot, there would still be a Church. The church is not a building you go to, but a body you become a part of. If your toe felt neglected and decided to leave, you better believe you'd notice that! In the same way every person in a given congregation is an important part of the bod, and collectively the various congregations make up the universal Church - the body of Christ. That said, we should belong to the body (ie "go to a church") because we are connected to the head, which is Christ, and to serve our function in the body. Nobody says "hey I want to be a toe!" but without toes your feet are pretty much useless. We need to find our gifts, the ways that God has uniquely equipped us to help every other member of the body and use those gifts for the good of the body. That means we should "go to church" to honor God and unite with Him, but also to unite with other believers and build them up. In turn, (if the church is functioning right) we are built up and encouraged. The early Church turned the world upside down because they had a genuine love for one another. It was that love that got the attention of the world, the kind of love that goes out of its way to reach out and help someone else. We go to church to become a part of the church, to be involved, to serve our brothers and sisters, to build relationships with people we are going to know FOREVER. A church is a community, preparing us for eternity and equipping us with the tools we need to do good works here on earth. A community, like mylot, requires active participation and intentional "togetherness" if it is to work. If a congregation is rotten to the core, maybe you should leave. But trust God to tell you when and to where, because ultimately, you are a member of HIS body, and HE knows where you can be most truely the person who HE created you to be. We need the Church because it is through uniting with Christ and His body that we find the fulfillment of our true purpose.

I agree w/ Dickkell, the Church is THE Body of Christ and we cannot be Christians being apart from His Body. Our loyalty should not be to a Church, i mean not to an organization, or a group of men and women gathering every Sunday, but To Christ. The Bible said that we should focus our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. If we do this, then we will be blind to our sentiments and what we want others to do for us. Instead, we will do things for the good of The Body of Christ.