Love Church

I love church. It has been and it is the center of my life since I asked Jesus into my heart when I was a child. A church was opened at my parents' house and it was a fascinating first experience: singing together, listening to the teachings, sharing food and our daily lives as a family. I joined the Catholic seminar because the time I spent at church was the best time of my life and I couldn’t conceive my life without it.

The church filled my youth and adult life. It is where I learned how to pray, how to sing, how to worship, how to love and how to serve. I lived the happiest hours there. I love church so much that I can’t do anything else. And, to be honest, I can’t understand people who don’t have a similar love for church, people who aren’t excited about the time to meet with their friends again to have an incredible experience worshiping God together.

Why are there so many anxious Christians who seem to suffer church? There was a time when coming to Christ meant coming to His church. Being a Christian meant having communion with the people of God. That has changed. The contemporary emphasis on the evangelical world is the believer's personal relationship with Christ. Today, individual faith is the dominant theme, and there is rarely any discussion about how believers are supposed to fit in the church. And, in the great effort to carry the message of personal salvation, the idea of planting churches has been forgotten and overlooked to the detriment of many souls.

Today many believers are just ecclesiastical consumers. They are only interested in what they can get from church and they are looking for the church that can provide the most attractive experience. They have no real commitment to other Christians and have little or no attachment to a house. For that kind of people, faith is completely and exclusively anchored in their personal relationship with Christ. "I believe in Jesus, but not in the church," I hear very often. "I follow Christ, but I don't want commitment to anyone," people say.

How can we call ourselves Christians when we resist loving, sharing and walking together as a church? How can we live an individualistic faith when Jesus himself gave his life for others?

A friend of mine who is a pastor once asked: “What do they come to church for? To listen to some music? There are tons of better bands on YouTube. To hear a good message? There are better preachers in Youtube. To enjoy a good show? There are better shows on YouTube. If that is the motivation, it is not enough to attend a church.”

The real reason we congregate in a church is to be able to experience the real Christian life where, through relationships, we can love and be loved, serve and be served, give and receive, forgive and be forgiven. Only through committed relationships we can experience the values ​​that Jesus came to teach us. It's about creating a community where we feel part of a family, a place where we learn to share the value of friendship, because we are members of each other.

In all New Testament letters the assumption is always the same: that the people of God congregate to share their faith together and build each other up. That encounter is not only the universal and invisible church throughout the world, but the local, visible congregation, which is the heart of Christianity. The Church is the only institution that the Lord established and promised to bless. He is building his house, and those of us who are part of it are embraced by his blessing.