Evangelical ecclesiology tends to nest at two extremes. At one end is faith in the Church—the people of God dispersed throughout all places and times. As the Nicene Creed says, Christians “believe in one, holy, catholic [or, universal] and apostolic church.” This is the body of Christ, comprising yet transcending local communities of belief, the “one body” (Eph 4:4) to which believers are added (Acts 2:47).
At the other end is the individual, each believer within the Church as a locus of faith, called to repent and believe the gospel. Paul writes, “It is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved” (Rom 10:10). Evangelicals emphasize the importance of individual conversion. We cannot make it to heaven on anyone else’s coattails.
But between these extremes rests an awkward, often-missing middle: the congregation. It sits between the Church on one hand and the believer on the other. No one would debate the essential nature of the Church, the bride of Christ. Nor would any disparage the faith of individual Christians destined for eternal life with God. But what about the congregation? Can we place so much importance on our local families of faith?
What do we say about the congregation? Of course it’s important to practicing Christianity as ones “not giving up meeting together” (Heb 10:25). But that may simply mean we’re supposed to attend worship services. Does the verse also demand we take part in a congregation as members? Can we obey Hebrews 10:25 by “church-hopping” to different worship gatherings week to week or by casually watching services online?
Such a seemingly high ecclesiology that proffers a serious and demanding understanding of the importance of assembling insists on attendance but not necessarily membership. I recently heard a minister articulate how there are some folks who are around church and other folks who are in church. There is a difference.
Well-meaning Christians say things like “I go to church for God, not for the people.” I hear the intention, but I have a hard time reconciling that sentiment with Scripture: “Whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20). Brothers and sisters in Christ can never merely be the blurred background of a Christian’s devotional experience with God.
To advocate for the importance of membership, many emphasize its sociospiritual benefits. “A coal removed from the fire grows cold,” some say. Or “Church is my weekly shot in the arm.” These statements speak to the value of membership but perhaps not its theological necessity. In a society of consumers, congregational involvement sometimes looks like an optional benefit we can choose or reject: “Membership is good because I get something out of it.”
The question looms: What do we say about the congregation? Is it a venue for a weekend worship experience? Is it a social pact I enter only as long as it remains obviously and immediately beneficial to me? Is the congregation a sort of spiritual convenience store peddling religious goods and services—unless (and until) I find another one up the street that offers better deals? Based on behavior I have observed, these attitudes remain prevalent in many congregations.
Church leaders often find themselves working in this excluded middle (to borrow a term from missiologist Paul Hiebert)—and we feel it. (Can I get an amen?) The congregation is neglected by those who assume it will be there for them whenever they are ready for it. During congregational turmoil—a pandemic, a scandal, a transition—many opt out quickly and easily. Attendance dips during summer months while people are vacationing, and the minister is left behind to keep the lights on. It’s not for naught that Henri Nouwen calls ministers to “claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world.” So much of our work is quiet, invisible, and underappreciated.
The theological no-man’s-land between the privatized individuality of my faith and the glorious but intangible Communion of Saints is where the congregation sits. This is something real with which Christians must come to terms. The universal church is too abstract to access, and private faith lives in the recesses of individual hearts. Faith at these extremes leaves room for gnostic forms of believing. But congregations don’t. With real people, parking lots, budgets, and bathrooms, these actually demand something of us. Here we find where faith must become incarnate and put on muscle to be lived out among real people.
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16). Without brothers and sisters, very little cross carrying occurs. The congregation—which so often seems accidental and nonessential—makes possible the crux of faith. It offers consistent opportunities to sacrifice ourselves, totake up a cross for the sake of a brother or sister.
An answer in nuce for why the congregation is essential is because love is essential. Of course the congregation is a place for faith and hope and is the context of instruction, formation, and worship. But without love no one can be a Christian. Of course we love God and our neighbors. But we are also called to love the church, and we cannot love the church in the abstract any more than we can love humanity in the abstract.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “Every human idealized image that is brought into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community. … Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community.” This gets to the heart of why we need the congregation. Without it, we abstract the Church into something uncostly. Without it, the individual’s heart remains her or his own. Only in real community do I experience love and come to see how costly it is. Only then and there can I truly learn what Christ bore for me.
Matthew D. Love teaches preaching and ministry at Harding School of Theology.
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