You can't attend church

Our culture has misunderstood what the church is. The idea most of us have when we hear the word 'church' is that it is a building, an organization, a corporate entity with a constitution, membership roles and a corporate structure of leadership.

However, if you read your Bible you will find that in reality, the church is simply the believers in Christ who make up his Body. Some will say, "well sure, of course we know that we ARE the church... we know that being in a garage does not make one a car... so attending church does not make us the church..." But, there is more to it than this simplistic idea about the issue. It is still a mistaken notion that you can "attend church".

You can't actually "ATTEND CHURCH". What I am saying is that the organization you are a part of, or the building you visit, the 'services' you sit in on... none of that really has anything much to do with the church. In fact, it may be distracting you from living out what we are supposed to be as the church.

I am not saying that God has not used this system of modeling and understanding "the church" for His kingdom, and I am not saying it is a sin to be a part of a church or "attend church" (if that is what you think you are doing)... I am simply saying that maybe we missed the point. Maybe we have formed the church into something that we model after our corporate structures or our traditions. Maybe we have made it into something it was never intended to be and in the process made it less than it should be.