God as Father Church as Mother

WHY REVIVAL BEGINS IN THE PEW, NOT ON THE COUCH

BY MIKE MAZYCK

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 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. – Hebrews 10:24–25 (NKJV)

Is it possible to be a mature and healthy Christian believer and not be a deeply devoted member of a local church?

If you would have asked me that question ten years ago, I would have likely said yes. We were technically members of the local megachurch in our city, but our attendance was sporadic at best, we had no deep Christian community in our lives, and we certainly weren’t using our time and talents to serve the Church in any meaningful way. I knew the command of Scripture, not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together but my heart responded with an abundance of great justifications. I told myself…

I am not “forsaking” the local church. We are just in a really busy season right now. God understands that we need a little rest on Sundays. Once we are out of this season, we will get committed.

The “church” just means any group of Christian brothers and sisters. As long as I have fellowship with other Christians, it doesn’t really matter that I am not a committed member of a traditional local church. I don’t need the local church to be a healthy and mature Christian. The foundation of the Christian life is my personal time with God. As long as I am spending time with Him personally each day, I am good to go.

All of those excuses began to crumble in 2021 when God brought personal revival into my life after a difficult season of spiritual selfexamination. During that season, I put aside the self-help gurus and popular spiritual teachers of our day and began supplementing my time in the Word with the teachings of the great saints from past generations, men I now refer to as “the old dead guys”. I was searching for truth. Searching to see if these convictions that were coming upon me were from God. Searching to see if the Christianity I was seeing lived out all around me was the real thing. Searching to see what the Christian life was supposed to look like. And when it came to the role of the local church — searching to see if my all my justifications were really nothing more than excuses.

As I searched the Scriptures and delved into the writings of those old dead guys, I began to see that for the majority of church history, there was a version of Christianity being practiced that was radically different than what I was seeing lived out today. My eyes were beginning to open to my tragic neglect of many facets of the Christian life and conviction was setting in in many areas, not the least of which was my relationship, or lack thereof, with the local church.

My mind was gradually being transformed during this season, and I was coming to the conclusion that I had gotten something very wrong: The foundation and headquarters of the Christian life was not in fact the couch in my living room where I did my quiet times each day, it was the local church! I began to see that the local church was the centerpiece of the Christian life and that God had designed the Christian experience to be lived out within the context of deep community with other believers.

As I searched the Word, and surveyed the landscape of Christianity from past generations, my Western individualistic version of Christianity that allowed me to neglect the local church and live in isolation, was slowly collapsing.

In light of this new revelation, I knew that something had to change. I was being called by God to repent of the sin I was living in; the sin of neglecting His Church — the very body of Christ Himself. To be clear, He was not calling me to simply be more consistent with sitting in a pew on Sunday mornings. No, He was calling me to much more, something much deeper. He was calling me to give my life to Him — through the local church! To orient my entire life around Him – through my commitment and service to the local church. My eyes had been opened up to see that this has been the model of Christianity throughout the majority of Church history, up until about the last 150 years. The saints of old would have found the thought of someone being a true Christian, and not being deeply committed to the local church, preposterous. Consider the words of Augustine…

“For outside the church they [one’s sins] have no remission. For it is the church in particular that has received the earnest, the Holy Spirit, apart from whom no sins receive remission... the deserter of the Church cannot be in Christ, since he is not among Christ’s members…for he cannot have God as his Father who does not have the Church for his mother.”

I realize those words of Augustine almost seem heretical to Christians today. But Augustine was not alone in his view. Martin Luther echoed his sentiment…

“Outside this Christian Church there is no salvation or forgiveness of sins, but everlasting death and damnation; even though there may be a magnificent appearance of holiness.”

John Calvin, in his commentary on Ephesians, writes it like this, “The church is the common mother of all the Godly, which bears, nourishes, and governs in the Lord both kings and commoners; and this is done by the ministry. Those who neglect or despise this order want to be wiser than Christ. Woe to their pride!”

In his book, Disciplines of a Godly Man modern day teacher Kent Hughes sums up his teaching on the local church with these words, “So we conclude that church hitchhikers, ecclesiastical wanderers, spiritual Lone Rangers, and Christians who disdain membership are aberrations in the history of the Christian church and are in grievous error.”

Are these men saying that membership in the local church is a pre-requisite to salvation? Are they making commitment and membership to a local church a “work” that is necessary for salvation? No, all of these men were deeply committed to the fact that salvation is by grace alone. As I ponder these difficult words they have said, I think that their logic would look something like this: The entire Christian life has been designed by God to be lived out within the context of the local church, which is founded upon deep fellowship and interconnectedness with other members of the body of Christ. Furthermore, the sacraments, nourishment, discipline, and encouragement that come as a result of this relationship with the body of Christ, are the primary means of grace by which God conforms us to His image. ( Ephesians 4:7-13)

Just as the baby cannot survive without the nourishment and protection of the mother, the believer has no growth and life outside of the local church. If these things are true, then we know that any true Christian, with the Holy Spirit living inside of them, will be led by the Holy Spirit to become a deeply committed member to a local Church. If someone has rejected this relationship with the body of Christ, the logical question is this: Does the Holy Spirit actually dwell in them?