Stop Dating the Church

The title of this month’s article is also the title of a small but powerful little book. It is written by Joshua Harris. In fact, I wholeheartedly admit, that one of my purposes in writing this article to stir up interest so that some of you will actually go out and buy the book, read it, and implement some of its content into your life. It impacted me in such a positive way. I don’t know that I learned even one new thing from reading it, but it framed some of the Biblical data on the subject in such a way as to make it blatantly obvious what I was to do in my own personal life. Hopefully, it will have the same impact on YOU!!

The gist of the book is that we often view our relationship with our local church as one of dating. There is no firm commitment in place, so we are not tied down. In a marriage, we are held accountable to provide for those in our family. We are permanently joined to them and take ownership in their lives. Harris outlines several practical and Biblical suggestions driving us to conclude that we, in fact, are supposed to be married to the church and not just dating her.

An excerpt from pages 44-45:

Is belonging to a church really just a formality? When asked what church she belonged to, one Sunday-morning visitor told a pastor, “The universal body of Christ…” Technically, she may be right. As we saw in the last chapter, every authentic Christian does belong to Christ – and that’s wonderful! But is it either wise or right for a person to be linked spiritually to the universal Church yet have no connection to a local church? Is it even possible? Wouldn’t that be like telling your new bride that while your love is true, you have other priorities? Your heart, of course, is all hers, but as for the rest of you . . . well, you’ll be in and out. I propose that for sincere followers of Christ, the Bible allows for no such disconnect. If you and I identify with and love the idea of church, we must consider how we can identify with and love an actual church.

In our culture today, we are hesitant to join anything. We do not want to be tied down to anything. Commitment is a dirty word. We can give all kinds of reasons and rationalities as to why we should not and cannot be tied down. In the midst of our information driven world, we don’t want OUR information to be connected to someone or something. Our knowledge comes preferably by anonymous e-mails, impersonal voice mail, untraceable web pages, sterile text messages, etc… We bank, shop, research, read, and live without interacting with people.

It is impossible to be a Christian and to stay removed from people. Well, perhaps I should say, it is impossible to be an obedient Christian and to stay removed from people.

Think about it . . . Christ certainly loves the church. Shouldn’t I love what He loves?