 Why should I go to church? It's an important question to ask. I was actually asked this question by a young man on Instagram who was a new Christian and I wanted to give him a good answer. So I packed up my stuff and headed out the door to find the answer. You may be wondering why I didn't just look up the answer online, but stick with me. I think this is gonna be fun and more beneficial. You know, why is it important that we go to church? And it's an important question that we all should ask ourselves because if we don't, then you know what? We'll just kind of like, well, I'm not feeling it this Sunday. I'm not gonna go in. So it's important to have reasons behind our actions. And so today I want to kind of dig into why do we go to church? Why is it important that we get plugged into a local body of believers? I wanted to get some help from my friend and associate pastor of my church, Chris Wetztein. First, I wanted for us to set the foundation for what the church really is. The church really isn't, in one sense, something totally weird and different. It's something that is really the fulfillment of God's plan from the beginning. God designed humanity, the whole human race to live in community with one another. We didn't get made to be just individuals roaming this planet all separately. So right from the beginning, God made one man, one woman, made them so that they could be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth. And so human community has always been part of God's plan. And really what the church is, it's the redeemed humanity that God had originally intended from the beginning to make. So when the Bible talks about the church, there's two ways, at least, that we can think about the church. Jesus says, I will build my church. So the Bible talks in that way about the church as a worldwide community. And when Jesus says, I will build my church, he doesn't mean just this one local church on this one street corner somewhere, but he's talking about the church that will endure throughout all history. The gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Yeah, on one hand, there's a worldwide community that Jesus has been building, and that means everyone who believes in Jesus, everyone who follows Jesus as Lord, is part of the church. And the second way the Bible talks about the word church or uses the word church is to say that there are local gatherings of people, local churches where Christians meet together on a regular basis and seek to follow Jesus together. This is not an isolated thing. Like one person isn't the church. It's multiple people. So can you speak to a little bit, okay, seeing that, keeping that in perspective, why should me as a person that just came to faith in Christ, why is it important that I personally get plugged into a local church? Yeah, well you can see it's part of God's plan, it's part of God's design. It's really God's will for you if you follow Jesus that you'd follow him together with other Christians. In a sense, it's going to church as part of following Jesus really. Now it's not that you just have to look at one verse or two verses where they say go to church, but you can see in Hebrews chapter 10 we shouldn't neglect meeting together and that's spoken to believers, but we should seek to encourage one another. There are all these one another commandments throughout the New Testament, where the instructions of the New Testament are given to local churches, to the church in Corinth, to the church in Ephesus or wherever. And so really, if you're going to follow the Bible, if you're going to follow Jesus, you should see that you have to be part of a local church. That's just part and parcel of it. So why should you do it while it's part of following Jesus? While I was chatting with Chris, I wanted to get his take on how the church can help believers find and use their giftings. Well, I think, you know, once you are finding yourself going to a particular church over time, you start to learn something about yourself just from the fact that you're going to say a small group. Now, when you talk about going to church, I mean, I'd like to clarify, for some people going to church is just going Sunday morning, they just show up and maybe they're just listening in, maybe singing along a little bit. And then they go home at the end. And at the most, maybe they shook somebody's hand or said hello. And that was it. And now you're not really going to get to know much about yourself or really grow in a sense of meaningful community, if that's all that you've done. But I think most churches, a good healthy church at least would say, you know, get plugged in deeper, go to a small group where you can actually meet with people and talk together and actually pray with each other, or at least hear prayer requests with each other that are more on the personal level. If all you're doing is going to the big group on Sunday morning, you're only going to know people or know about the church and be a part of the community from kind of a distant, in a distant way. But if you start to plug into a small group, you're going to feel yourself stretched, you're going to feel a sense of need to share a little bit more about yourself. And you're going to learn certain characteristics of being vulnerable. You might not want to do that. And that's fine. A good healthy community won't pressure you into that. But you'll be in a situation where that is at least possible. And so you'll start to learn about yourself and you'll start to learn, oh, you know, maybe I'm someone who actually can have a lot of empathy. If I'm going to be stretched and opening up, and I see other people who are struggling to open up or struggling with different issues, maybe you'll learn that, oh, I have a certain quality of having empathy. And that's really important in a local church body. It might be as simple as just through your experience of going and being part of a small group, you'll start to learn characteristics about yourself, or you might realize, oh, I have a real passion for something because somebody else is speaking so passionately about something, or they're often talking about a certain issue, you might realize in yourself, I really want to be part of that. I really want to give my time and energy to this work of whatever it is, maybe it's something overseas, maybe it's something near at home, maybe it's helping in a homeless service, active service in some ways, you'll start to realize through other people, a local church can be kind of like a community where you start to see other possibilities of the kind of person you could be. When we talk about the question of why we should go to church, it's important to keep in mind the centrality of the gospel, the gospel being the main reason that we even go to church. And as I talked with Chris, he brought this into a full perspective. One thing that we all need, whether you're not a Christian yet, or if you are a Christian already, and if maybe you've been a Christian for a long time, what we all need is to hear God speaking to us again and again for as long as we live. And God speaks in a special way through the local church when we're gathered. Now, I don't mean that in some strange kind of way, but I mean in the sense that God speaks through Scripture and he has designed Scripture. Scripture is made in such a way that it's meant to be spoken and preached and taught. And so God's word in a special way is present when the local church is gathered. So why should I go to church? One big thing is to be a receiver. You know, I've talked in other places like just a moment ago about the importance of finding your gifts and finding your ways that you can serve, but actually that only comes out of a relationship with God and we need to continually be receiving. So when I go to church, one big thing, even as a pastor, when I go to church, I want to be a receiver and I do want to let the Word of Christ dwell in me richly. That's one of the instructions in Colossians 3. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly and it's spoken to believers because he says you should be singing with one another, speaking to one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs. And so I think one reason to go to church is simply to receive God's Word and to let that dwell in us richly. As I drove home that day, I was thankful to be a part of a local church growing in my faith alongside people like Pastor Chris. The insight, encouragement and community that comes with being a part of a local church is a wonderful part of God's design. Disciples following Jesus as they walk together. Don't miss out. Get plugged into a local church today. Hey guys, hope you enjoyed this video. I know it was a little bit different than usual, but I hope it's a good, it's a good switch up. So yeah, big thanks to Pastor Chris for doing this video with me and I hope to have him on the show again. If you like the video, give it a like and subscribe for videos like this in the future. Thanks guys. See you later.