In my 25 years caring for our wonderful church, I have had the interesting experience of hearing certain phrases repeated by people that dare darken our doors. Here are a few examples:

“I don’t have a church, I just go where God leads me each week.”

“I’ve been church shopping…for over 2 years…”

“I just can’t seem to find a church that checks all my boxes.”

And to these nursing infants I quote the words of Agur, son of Jakeh, penned sometime around 999 B.C. but still quite relevant today:

“The leech has two daughters; their names: ‘Give Me’ and ‘Give Me More’!”

Oh my!

Elsewhere in the Scripture and written much later we have another passage relevant to this topic: “Do not forsake the assembling of the church, as is the habit of some, but exhort one another!”

Why is it important to have a church home? Here are a few reasons.

REASON #1: You need people up in your business.
Another word for this concept is accountability. If I hop from church to church, I will never get to know anyone, and they will never get to know me, because they will likely only see me once a month if the stars align and we’re all there together. The popular notion of “church hopping” aka “church shopping” might really just be an excuse to never commit, which is a great way to never build real proximity to such ordinary and unimpressive others where I might have to deal with my stuff. In contrast, a person who makes a decision to root with a certain body of believers also make the decision to become real and vulnerable with them, since they have to see each other often. When that happens, real friendships form and real healing happens.

REASON #2: You have a lot to give.
A healthy church is one where everyone is invited to be participants, not spectators. Rather than the church being run by a select few gifted superstars, it is instead a place where everybody gets to play. That means you! Inside of every human is some amazing potential to do some amazing thing for the good of others. In a healthy church, such service comes out of trust and relationship. For example, only those who are known should be trusted caring for our children, leading from the front, and so on. If you frequent a particular church only on occasion, you will never build the trust needed to be given the privilege to serve others because nobody really knows anything about you.

REASON #3: Serving is more important than being served.
The sick and neutering methodology embraced by most of the first world church invites you to enter the building, receive lots of gifts for visiting that morning, sit in a chair, watch a stage show that will entertain you and make you feel happy, and then move along so the next cattle can enter the pen. Biblical church life is very different from this. Instead of coming to receive, we come to give. Instead of seeing “what I can get out of it”, I come to see whose feet need washing. The thing is, nobody wants to wash feet these days and many imitation Christians roam the land looking for the church experience that will bring the most base-level stimulation rather than require any actual work or life-change. Again in contrast, committing to a church and calling it my home means I’m going be there when I do and don’t feel like it, give, and serve the same people year in and year out. Sound boring? Maybe if I’m selfish. But maybe there is something beautiful about showing up with the goal of adding, not taking.

To conclude: You need a church home because it will beat the self-absorbed religion out of you and form you into a real follower of Jesus…one who is humble before others, one who is trusted to serve others in their areas of gifting, one who is more interested in giving rather than taking. A church filled with those kinds of people will be full of Something Else very sweet and special.

Lord, may it be for us at Vineyard Community Church!