lifeasmission

Do You Have To Go To Church Every Sunday To Be A Christian?

October 9, 2006

My girlfriend was telling me the other day how she had had a conversation with a couple people around this question.  For reasons of language (Norwegian) and context (country with a Lutheran State Church), the question apparently didn’t mean the same thing within their conversation as it did my ears, but it got me thinking nonetheless.  How are we to answer the question of what it means to be a Christian?  As luck would have it, in the research I am doing for my masters thesis, I read something helpful just today.

In speaking of salvation, James McClendon says, “…the doctrines and languages of a community are necessarily understood in terms of its practices.  I take this to mean then that if Christians practice gathering together for times of worship, celebration, and whatever else may constitue a church gathering, then they understand this practice to be part of their understanding of what it means to be saved. 

McClendon goes on to say, “Talk of Christian salvation without Christian practices and Christian convictions is like talk of a fire that consumes no oxygen and releases no heat, like talk of a society that has no members and remembers no history.”  Without these things, practices and convictions, Christian salvation loses its incarnational and missional form and therefore ceases to be in any biblical sense, Christian (Christ-like).

Do you have to go to church every Sunday to be a Christian?  In so many ways (and this is not a reflection on the conversation which I wasn’t a part of!) this question misses the point.  First, it assumes that church is primarily a place and/or event and not a people.  Second, it assumes there is something unique about the 24 hours we call Sunday.  And finally, it presumes that we are entitled to the name, “Christian,” primarily by virtue of what we do.

On the other hand, this question leads us to a very fruitful line of thinking.  What is the relationship between Christian meetings and our underdstanding of salvation?  How might one (or a community) be affected if meeting together regularly was taken lightly (Heb. 10:25)?  How should people be affected by virtue of gathering regularly as a Christian practice?

If McClendon is right, then, for Christians, the practice of gathering regularly is imperative both for our undersanding of and participation in the salvation of God, as well as for our missional witness in the world.

Posted in: church, community, meremission, missional, theology