I'd probably ask for some additional background to show you're not trying to troll or just stir stuff up before people chime in.

10andBOUNCE said:

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I'd probably ask for some additional background to show you're not trying to troll or just stir stuff up before people chime in.

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Agree. Fellowship with believers is crucial in my opinion.

If you're protestant, then it doesn't matter. You can get all they provide online and outside the "church."

If you're Catholic or Orthodox, the only way to receive the eucharist weekly is by attending Mass/Divine Liturgy

Quote:

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Heb 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching

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By skipping church habitualy you're disobeying a commandment God gave for your own good. You need to be there and God knows you need it. You need to be there to worship God. He deserves your worship. Don't forsake God or your brethren. You cannot encourage others at church if you're not there. They need you as much as you need them.

God bless you!

Life is not about taking. It is about giving.

Your question is what is your "take" for going to church or what do you get? This is a selfish approach in my opinion and of course you don't have to agree.

Maybe focus on how you can give to others. You can't give to others if you never see them.

God placed you in the body of Christ where it pleaesd him and we are supposed to work where it benefits the body. The body misses out when parts of the body don't do their part.

Hope that helps!

People say "I don't need to go to Church to worship God. I can do that outside of Church." which is totally true, you don't have to go to Church to worship God.

But I would say to them do they actually follow through and do that?

If you read the scriptures the last thing you'll come away with is that ritual worship is not required of us or important. Jesus taught us how to worship, and that mode of worship was passed down to us through the apostles. You have to contend with Jesus' teaching to "do this in remembrance of me".

Thunderstruck xx said:

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I feel like I am a good enough Christian and person to not need to spend time at church every week. I think it's been over 20 years since I've been to a church for just the weekly service.

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If you have not been in over 20 years, you are not a good enough Christian.

TeddyAg0422 said:

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If you're protestant, then it doesn't matter. You can get all they provide online and outside the "church."

If you're Catholic or Orthodox, the only way to receive the eucharist weekly is by attending Mass/Divine Liturgy

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I know you're winking, but I feel the need to clarify this isn't true about Protestants…

I GET to go to church - yay! Not everyone is so blessed to be able to so easily and freely worship with their brothers and sisters. If you don't want to or like to do it now, you're not going to find heaven very enjoyable…

1 Timothy 3:15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

The church is the household of God, a pillar and buttress of the truth - pretty important.

Thunderstruck xx said:

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I feel like I am a good enough Christian and person to not need to spend time at church every week. I think it's been over 20 years since I've been to a church for just the weekly service.

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None of us are "good enough Christians." Anyone who thinks their good enough needs to work on their humility, the highest virtue. Going to church is how you worship God. We worship God on His terms, not our own. Again, this goes back to humility. Will you submit yourself to the creator of the universe or not?

Nahab and Abihu are struck down with fire in Leviticus for worshipping in a manner they saw fit, which was not in accord with what God prescribed. No one gets struck down today, but the lesson remains.

Last, the best point is that church is the only place you can get communion. This is true for all denominations. Communion is not optional for the Christian. The Bible makes that clear.

This reminds me a little about people invoking the thief on the cross - "what about him, huh? HE didn't need to be baptized!" The reasonable answer is if you find yourself being crucified next to the king of glory, you can probably assume the same opportunity is there for you. For the rest of us….

If you're called to be a hermit or an anchorite or stilite, ok. For the rest of us…

Thunderstruck xx said:

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I feel like I am a good enough Christian and person to not need to spend time at church every week. I think it's been over 20 years since I've been to a church for just the weekly service.

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Well there's your problem.

Thunderstruck xx said:

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I feel like I am a good enough Christian and person to not need to spend time at church every week. I think it's been over 20 years since I've been to a church for just the weekly service.

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Honest attempt at answer here through some questioning.

What role do you think the church holds today?
What do you think your obligations are to God about how to order your life?
Have you really thought about how good you are?
If you had joined the early church in year 34AD, and then spent 20 years never attending another service, do you think the church would call you a Christian?

Remember Jesus talking about separating the sheep from the goats is about his own flock. You're gonna stand in God's presence one day with 20 years of not even attending church and demand to God you are a sheep? This is clearly goat behavior.

At its core, your question is deeply evangelical. What is the bare minimum that must be done for me to be saved, and then I can go on about my daily life like an atheist.

No understanding of the church as a hospital, sin as a sickness, communion as the purpose of service, the cycles of the church as means for man to work on theosis.

one MEEN Ag said:

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Thunderstruck xx said:

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I feel like I am a good enough Christian and person to not need to spend time at church every week. I think it's been over 20 years since I've been to a church for just the weekly service.

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Honest attempt at answer here through some questioning.

What role do you think the church holds today?
What do you think your obligations are to God about how to order your life?
Have you really thought about how good you are?
If you had joined the early church in year 34AD, and then spent 20 years never attending another service, do you think the church would call you a Christian?

Remember Jesus talking about separating the sheep from the goats is about his own flock. You're gonna stand in God's presence one day with 20 years of not even attending church and demand to God you are a sheep? This is clearly goat behavior.

At its core, your question is deeply evangelical. What is the bare minimum that must be done for me to be saved, and then I can go on about my daily life like an atheist.

No understanding of the church as a hospital, sin as a sickness, communion as the purpose of service, the cycles of the church as means for man to work on theosis.

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Sorry, not computing. Most of my experiences with RCC has been Christmas and Easter only go-ers.

The evangelical slander is tiresome.

Thunderstruck xx said:

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I feel like I am a good enough Christian and person to not need to spend time at church every week. I think it's been over 20 years since I've been to a church for just the weekly service.

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The whole story of Genesis is God commanding man to 'become God' and setting out how man should order his life to grow in Theosis.

By sitting at home for 20 years doing jack crap you have basically abdicated your duty to yourself to grow towards God in the ways God has commanded us to. What have you accumulatively built in the past 20 years with your 2 hours on Sunday mornings that couldn't have gotten done elsewhere in your week? How does all of that measure up to what could've sacrificed for God? Forget the virtues you didn't do, you could've better squeezed in your vices with the rest of your time and still made it to church.

We can only offer God three things: Our time, our money, and our obedience. And our time and money are only valuable to God as sacrifices because we are finite creatures of dust. Something he's trying to help us fix (through our obedience).

10andBOUNCE said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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Thunderstruck xx said:

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I feel like I am a good enough Christian and person to not need to spend time at church every week. I think it's been over 20 years since I've been to a church for just the weekly service.

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Honest attempt at answer here through some questioning.

What role do you think the church holds today?
What do you think your obligations are to God about how to order your life?
Have you really thought about how good you are?
If you had joined the early church in year 34AD, and then spent 20 years never attending another service, do you think the church would call you a Christian?

Remember Jesus talking about separating the sheep from the goats is about his own flock. You're gonna stand in God's presence one day with 20 years of not even attending church and demand to God you are a sheep? This is clearly goat behavior.

At its core, your question is deeply evangelical. What is the bare minimum that must be done for me to be saved, and then I can go on about my daily life like an atheist.

No understanding of the church as a hospital, sin as a sickness, communion as the purpose of service, the cycles of the church as means for man to work on theosis.

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Sorry, not computing. Most of my experiences with RCC has been Christmas and Easter only go-ers.

The evangelical slander is tiresome.

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Descriptive ethical claims are not the same as normative ethical claims. Just because you see catholics doing something wrong (descriptive ethics) doesn't mean whatever you're doing is normatively right.

Catholicism has, for better or worse, an internal understanding of authority, the role of church, the role of man, the role of sacraments. It answers how should you live your life, why you should attend church, and how communion is the center that everything orbits. Now do you see people not doing it? Sure. But when's the last time you noticed a catholic doing everything they should. How could you? You're not catholic. Its the bad toupee fallacy. Generally, devout catholic laity are not causing a stir, going to mass multiple times a week, tending to their kids, homeschooling or involved in a catholic school, etc. How are you going to rub elbows with them unless you work with them (you're a full time pastor) or are neighbors to them.

Now from an orthodox perspective their is a lot to critique about how their structures and views have changed. But at least they haven't thrown it all away (yet).

Protestantism, by its own title, is defined by it being against Rome. It has no internal authority. It only has 'not' as its defining feature as well as pull of secularism. It has no guardrail against bad theology to its apostolic succession, it has no defense against secular slide because it is born in secularism. It only gives rise to more splintering with shallower understanding of church. Whatever 'once saved always saved' doesn't stunt the growth of, calvinism will kill off. Also, sprinkle in some vacillations on universalism.

And I wouldn't throw stones at those christmas and easter only goers as a catholic only thing. They are your most heavily attended services as well. You could walk around your church right now and sort everyone into 3 buckets of equal quantity:
-people you know their name and their face
-people you know their face but not their name
-people you know nothing about

On big holidays the third group swells. But are they not better off than the OP here?

My fault. I forgot there is always going to be an assumed superiority complex when it comes to the RCC or EO. They have the true faith and we don't. Carry on.

I think this story/parable is relevant here:

unknown said:

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A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, suddenly stopped coming to church. After a few weeks, the pastor decided to visit.
The Pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire.
Guessing the reason for his Pastor's visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace, and waited. The pastor made himself at home but said nothing. In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs.
After some minutes, the pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember, and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone. Then he sat back in his chair, still silent. The host watched all this in quiet contemplation.
As the one lone ember's flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more. Soon it was cold and lifeless.
The Pastor glanced at his watch and realized it was time to leave, he slowly stood up, picked up the cold, dead ember, and placed it back in the middle of the fire. Immediately it began to glow, once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.
As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said with a tear running down his cheek, Thank you so much for your visit and especially, for the fiery sermon. I shall be back in church next Sunday."
Sometimes the best sermons are the ones left unspoken.

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10andBOUNCE said:

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My fault. I forgot there is always going to be an assumed superiority complex when it comes to the RCC or EO. They have the true faith and we don't. Carry on.

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Answer the following:

-Does the eastern orthodox have the most unchanging expression of faith and theology among the churches denominations?
-Why does your church not do the things that the most unchanged church does?

What have you gained from removing the following:

• No weekly communion, no belief in the presence of Christ in the cup
• No confession of sins, especially as part of communion
• No focus on fasting
• No monasteries for those who decide to devote their life to God.
• No scriptural authority, every man for himself in understanding the word of God.
• No authority structure of the clergy
• No preservations of the lives of the saints

You think by removing these things your church is normatively better equipped to act as the bride of Christ and bring about the salvation of man?

Would your church's beliefs and structure even make it through the first 1500 years of Christendom without being kicked out? If technology created your church (the printing press), your most base belief hinges upon worshipping technology.

10andBOUNCE said:

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Your bullet points are taking a lot of liberties. Not even going to take the time to correct or respond since you have it all figured out.

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When I was baptist and then nondenominational, I bristled at the arrogance of the orthodox. How dare they claim to still be the one true church. Why wont they draw a circle that defines being a christian in such a large diameter that it includes me and my beliefs?

You have apostasy baked so deeply into your worldview anything that doesn't agree with, 'Yeah we're all equally deficient from the early church' you see as arrogance.

But come on, let see you walk through the first thousand years of the united ortho-catholic church, understand its beliefs and structure, and then trace your lineage through the catholic schism, the protestant reformation, the evangelical grassroots movement, directly down to your church beliefs, and then go, 'yes this is the one true church'.

And how those beliefs are better than what the orthodox church practices while everyone else spent the last thousand years schisming instead of continuing to uphold the faith of the first thousand years.

And this is usually how it ends with protestantism/evangelicalism. Your own formation prevents you from being able to stand solely on claims of the truth. You have to forgo claiming your church is the truth and focus on unity, admitting that there is truth outside of your church.

But why would I attend your church if you can't even claim to be the truth, and here is another church that believes its own claims of being the truth? Doesn't even matter how factual those claims are, belief in primacy is worth a hell of a lot actually. And how can I winnow out what isn't truth if your church isn't the sole author of truth?

Its a bigger problem than you want to admit.

There are two important things I haven't seen outright stated yet.

1. Church is about God. It's not about you. We don't go to church to celebrate we are Christians, but about coming together to Worship God. If your life so busy that you can't take an hour a week to worship your God and Savior?

2. Secondarily, it is only at Church that you get to participate in the Sacraments of God, namely Communion weekly. Nowhere else do you get to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus. To weekly receive the visible grace of God?