How I learned that church matters…

Does church matter? It’s not uncommon these days to hear people say, “I believe in God, and I read my Bible and pray, but I don’t need to go to church.” Are they right? If we are regularly reading the Bible, if we are regularly praying, do we really need to go to church?

The short answer, I believe with all my heart and mind, is “yes.” In church, in fellowship with other believers, we hear the Word preached, and it changes us (Romans 10:17). With the body of Christ, we take part in the body of Christ, and we grow up to look like him (1 Cor. 10:16). Other believers encourage us, cheering us on, weeping with us, rejoicing with us, praying with us, serving with us, sharing the good news with us (Hebrews 10:24-25).

I could go on like this, making an argument for the necessity of church. But today I want to share a story, of how church first communicated God’s grace to me, and why, despite struggling with several broken church stories over the years, I consider it a non-negotiable spiritual grace.

Before there was church: “Silent Sundays”

I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt…the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert…

Maybe not the best lyrics for a seven-year-old-girl to have stuck in her head, but Kris Kristofferson’s song, as performed by Johnny Cash, is the song line of redemption that to this day, reminds me of why I love church.

I’m pretty sure the song played every Sunday morning we visited my Dad’s little rented ramshackle farmhouse, where he moved after my parents divorced. The album cover, with Johnny’s head looming large, sat propped on the three-foot-high wooden box speaker.

In that season of our lives, Sundays echoed with the “disappearing dreams of yesterday.” Sundays were the day of exchange, when my brother and I were returned from our weekend visit. Sundays were weighty, too quiet, sad.

Because of blue laws, Sundays were sleepy. Nothing except church opened on Sundays until 1. We didn’t go to church, at least not in the early years of divorce. At my mom’s, the sound of solitude echoed through our little apartment as the morning hours crept by. At 12:45, the three of us would pile into her little beige Toyota Corolla and venture out to Treasure Island, the 60’s predecessor to Target, with its wavy roof and vast concrete jungles that were beginning to pave paradise.

Don’t get me wrong. Not all Sundays were so sadly silent. There were picnics at the park and plays at the community theater, fall mornings throwing the football and spring days playing tennis. There was goodness and sweet and light. But it seemed that darkness hovered, threatening to overcome it.

Johnny Cash crooned out the longing I couldn’t quite place:

Somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing, and a Daddy with a laughing little girl he was swinging….

Church and “laughing little girls”

It was at church that I first caught glimpses of the laughing little girl inside me. At my grandmother’s house, where my brother and I stayed for a month in the summertime, Sunday meant church. More than once, I was sent back upstairs to put on my slip (a thin undergarment that we wore under sheer materials like dotted swiss!!). We went first to Sawnnnn-da School, as my grandmother assured everyone I used to call it. We sat at small tables under the kind expression of blue-eyed Jesus (Yikes! I didn’t say church was perfect!) and colored lost sheep. After church, as a special treat, we went to the church library and checked out clean-smelling hardback books.

When my brother turned sixteen and had the freedom to drive, he decided we should start going to church. In fact, he decided that we ought to be confirmed. (I never thought to argue). We had been baptized in a small chapel as infants, and over the years, we had occasionally visited the colossal cathedral when our mom or dad, whoever had us, was attending. Now, as teenagers, off we went, Sunday mornings for church and Sunday school and back on Sunday afternoons for confirmation classes. Sundays now offered purpose and structure and something to study, which this little teacher-girl always loved.

Even after I was a confirmed member of the Church, it took me another year to understand the meaning of church, the essence of Christianity (Again, I didn’t say church was perfect!). When I was 15, at a weekend Christian retreat, I sat on a rock under a starry sky and spoke to God the only three words I fully understood at the moment: “I need you.”

Now there was something in a Sunday that made the body not feel so alone. There were daddies with laughing little girls and the luscious smell of someone frying chicken (well, that was on Wednesday nights at a later church). But that was still not what Kristofferson, what Cash were really missing.

The “something lost somewhere along the way” was The Story, the gospel, preached, lived, and taught. Church is a place where those who smoked their minds the night before—and those who didn’t—come to consume the message we crave, the message of forgiveness in Jesus Christ, the message of grace, the message of our one true hope.

Kristofferson’s words ring true:

And there’s nothing short a’ dying
That’s half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.

Yes, there is sorrow and loneliness and pain to be found in the church. But here, in the hospital for sinners that offers hospitality to strangers, the light overcomes the darkness. It is a place where the song line of redemption meets the sound of sleeping city sidewalks. It is the place where we sing and tell the only story that truly satisfies the loneliness and longings of Sunday morning coming down.

Photo by sergio souza on Unsplash