"I don't know if you're ready to see what I want to show you..."

A shiny quarter for the first person to tell me what movie, what scene that line is from!

This is a subject I've been thinking and praying about for a while. The thoughts are still in development, so forgive me if they seem somewhat disorderly.

I've heard no less than 3 teachers talk about the necessity of belonging to a local "church" body in the past week. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the specific teaching was basically that if you wanted to really know the will of God for your life, one of the key things is you must be a part of and be faithful to a local church, meaning, a local modern institutional church.

Some really good friends of ours recently stopped attending the "church" they were a part of and weren't sure when or where they were going to attend next. They basically felt their path had diverged from that church's path, and it was time to move on. They were basically told that it wasn't God's will for them to not know where they were going next, or for them to not be a part of a local church immediately thereafter.

Where did we get this idea that you MUST be a part of a local church to be a good Christian? And how ridiculous is it to say that we can't know the will of God for our life unless we are faithful to a local church? If someone knows where this is found in the Bible, please reply or message me or call me or something, because I've looked, and I can't find it.

Yes, I know the verse "forsaking not the assembling together, as some are in the habit of doing" in Hebrews 10. But if we think that verse is referring to the modern day church, we are, at the very least, very mistaken. When early believers assembled together, it was not like "church" as we know it today. And it did not refer to a specific weekly meeting time. Whenever believers gathered, the church was there, because it was not a place, it was the people. They shared life together, shared meals, shared fellowship as the Body of Christ, no matter where they were or what they were doing. This is what the author of Hebrews was referring to.

Do believers today need fellowship with other believers? I wouldn't say they need it. If we were ever in a place where we couldn't find other believers to fellowship with, Jesus would be able to take care of us and sustain us. But should believers who are growing in a relationship with the Father desire fellowship and quality relationships with other believers? Yes!

I just don't think it has to take the form of a local church all the time. And I don't believe there is anything in the Bible to say that it must, either. You can be meeting in your home with a few other believers and experience that. You can be talking at the coffeeshop with a close Christian friend about God and be experiencing the life of the Body. You can attend a different "church" every week, and if you are genuinely connecting with the believers there, you can be experiencing Body life. I think there are so many more expressions of life in the Body of Christ than we are experiencing- and just as we limit our worship to singing, I believe we limit expressions of life in Christ and fellowship with believers to only one expression- the modern Church. And anytime you start trying to limit God, you'll never experience true freedom in life with Christ.

Once again, this may seem unorganized but please know this blog does not exhaust all my thoughts on this subject. My fingers can only take so much typing. And I tend to ramble anyway.

Please share your thoughts with me, especially my friends across the Pond. Do you believe if you are a follower of Christ that you must be attending a local church regularly and faithfully? Do you believe, as I have heard taught recently, that you cannot personally know the will of God for your life if you aren't "plugged in" to a local church? But please, if you disagree, be nice. Remember I attend modern "church" just like most of you. This blog is not intended to cause arguments, just to get some thought and healthy discussion going.