Why church?

The power of the individual spiritual experience can awaken us, change us, move us, save us. It can also seduce us. It can lure us into believing that the collective experience of worship has little or nothing to offer. Those of us who choose to attend church hear over and over from those who do not about the presence of God in nature, at home, on the tops of mountains, in isolated meditation and reclusive prayer, amidst gatherings of friends and family, and so on and so on.


I have no disagreement with the idea that God is everywhere and that human existence offers abundant opportunities to connect with the divine that have nothing to do with where you are at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. But I think that idea is irrelevant to the question of whether going to church also has something to recommend it. After all, the idea that God is omnipresent and the idea that church attendance may help us grow spiritually are not mutually exclusive.


Regular church attendance has many virtues. One of its greatest virtues is that it ensures we will take at least one hour a week and focus on God and God's work. This is, of course, a pitiable amount of time. But, for many of us, it is one hour more than we would spend if left to nature, mountaintops, meditation mats, and cookouts.


To claim we do not need this discipline seems to me a kind a hubris. And conceding that we do need it seems a worthwhile exercise in candor and humility. Church compels us to concede that we may need some help in finding our way to a deep and valuable relationship with God. It is a concession we should readily, indeed cheerfully, make.


The story goes that a student once inquired of a Zen master: "You say that Zen is everywhere. If that is so, then why must we come to this temple?" The master replied: "Zen is everywhere. But, for you, Zen is right here."

God is everywhere. So why go to church? Because, for us, in all of our splendid limitedness and stubbon self-centeredness, God is right there.