We Christians are not transformed simply by hearing sermons week after week. We are transformed by regular encounters with the Lord Jesus Christ. – Page 100

Every Sunday you attend the service to be bandaged and recharged, like all other wounded soldiers. Far too often, however, the bandaging and the recharging never takes place. The reason is quite simple. The New Testament never links sitting through an ossified ritual that we mislabel “church” as having anything to do with spiritual transformation. We grow by functioning, not by passively watching and listening. – Page 77

Somehow we have been taught to feel holier when we are in “the house of God” and have inherited a pathological dependency upon an edifice to carry out our worship to God. At bottom, the church building has taught us badly about what church is and what it does. It is a contradiction of the very nature of the ekklesia – which is a countercultural community. The Church building impedes our understanding and experience that the church is Christ’s functing body that lives and breaths under His direct headship. – Page 42

If the truth be told, we Christians never seem to ask why we do what we do. Instead, we blithely carry out our relgious traditions without asking where they came form. Most Christians who claim to uphold the integrity of God’s Word have never sought to see if what they do every Sunday has any scriptural backing. How do we know that? Because if they did, it would lead them to some very disturbing conclusions that would compel them by conscience to forever abandon what they are doing. – Page 5

I recently had my 28th birthday. I received some money and decided to spend it at Amazon.com. I bought The Ultimate Hitchiker’s Guide (Leather Bound Edition). It looks remarkably like a Bible.

I was sitting around with some friends and family and told them of my new purchase. Joking, I said I was going to bring it to “church” with me and read it during the sermon, so I won’t be bored. Then something happened, a number of people said, “that’s what I do.”

What they meant was, they *usually* open their Bibles during the Sunday sermon and start reading. Some of them said they will read a completely different book/chapter/verse, some said they read the same book/chapter/verse but still ignore/half-listening to what the speaker is saying. To be honest, I do this regularly. Most of the time, though, I read the same book/chapter/verse, but read it in context and then wonder how in the world Joe Blow got his point from that text. Anyways, the impression I got was, that these people generally don’t get anything from the teaching part of the Sunday service, so my question is, why go?

If y’all remember, the last time I taught, during a Sunday service, I was told that I went above the heads of most people in the audience. Apparently it was frowned upon to teach the “meat”. What was funniest is that I had a number of people come up to me and tell me what a great job I did and how much they learned. One lady even showed me a full sheet of notes that she took. By the way, the majority of these people were in the same demographic that I was told wouldn’t understand what I said. I wonder, at what point did we all become stupid? Was it when we walked into the building? Or is it the fact that the teacher is just smarter than everyone else?

In a more recent conversation, a close friend of mine was explaining why she doesn’t go on Sunday mornings. Her complaint, “I just sit there and don’t learn anything new”. I agree. How many times can you be told what the Bible says? I know what the Bible says. For the most part, even when I don’t know what the Bible says, I still know what God would say about a certain topic. This same girl decided that she has better things to do with her time than sit around listening to some guy feed her milk. So she asked herself, “Why Go?” and stopped going.

As far as I can tell, the best answer to “Why Go?” is that these buildings are full of other believers on Sunday mornings. So it is the best possible place to meet other believers. The problem is, most of these meetings are sit-n-go’s. We all sit, listen, and go – fellowship only exists in hand-shakes and smiles.

Why do you go?