“Do I have to?” is usually a child’s question about chores, and when an adult asks it about church, the words are almost never the real question. Underneath, in my experience, lives one of three things: church bored me — the sermons were long and the coffee was worse; church hurt me — and some of those wounds are deep and real; or church seems unnecessary now — I can stream better preaching than my local congregation offers, in my pajamas, with good coffee, so what exactly is the building for?

I want to answer all three honestly, because a pastor who pretends the question is simple has not been listening. But I should put the thesis on the table early, so you know where this is headed: the New Testament does not contain a private Christianity. It does not condemn the solitary believer so much as it never imagines him — like a marriage manual for a man alone on an island. From its first pages, to believe in Jesus was to be added to a people (Acts 2:47).

The question under the question

If you are bored: fair enough, and some of that is on us. Church was never meant to entertain you, but it was never meant to anesthetize you either, and a congregation where the Word of God is actually opened should not feel like a hostage situation with hymnals. There are dull churches the way there are dull marriages, and the cure for both is rarely abandonment.

If you are hurt: I am not going to talk you out of that, and I have a whole section for you below — you may skip to it, and I would not blame you. Church hurt is real. Pretending otherwise is itself a kind of church hurt.

And if church simply seems optional — an accessory for people who like potlucks — then the next section is the load-bearing one.

You cannot be a New Testament Christian alone

And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. Hebrews 10:24–25

Notice two things. First, skipping the assembly is not a modern invention — it was already the manner of some in the first century, before anyone had a couch or a livestream to blame. Second, notice why we are told to gather: not to fill seats, but to consider one another, to provoke one another to love, to exhort one another. You cannot do any of that alone, and — this is the part we forget — no one can do it to you if you are not there.

The New Testament is strung with commands like that, the “one anothers”: love one another, bear one another’s burdens, forgive one another, pray for one another, comfort one another — dozens of them. Every single one is grammatically impossible in solitude. A Christianity of one has quietly amputated most of its own instructions. Paul’s favorite picture for the church makes the point with a smile:

And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. 1 Corinthians 12:21

A body part in a jar is not enjoying its independence. The old pastors used to say it with a fireplace: pull one coal out of the fire and set it on the hearth, and it does not become a freer coal. It becomes a cold one. I have watched that happen to believers for years, and it is always the same slow gray fade.

What church actually is (it was never the building)

Part of the trouble is that “church” has come to mean a building with a steeple or a production with a fog machine, and you can be forgiven for not missing either. The New Testament word simply means the assembly — the called-out people. Here is the earliest description we have, four ingredients long:

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. Acts 2:42

Teaching, fellowship, the table, and prayer. No mention of square footage. A dozen believers around a kitchen table with an open Bible and the bread and cup are closer to Acts 2 than a stadium with none of the four. And Jesus attached His own presence to the gathering in a verse people often quote to excuse staying home:

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Matthew 18:20

Read it again: the promise is for the two or three gathered. The verse everyone uses to shrink church actually pulls in the other direction — toward bodies in a room, however few.

Online church, honestly assessed

Let me be fair, because God is not limited by a screen. For the homebound saint, the hospital bed, the deployed, the new mother at 3 a.m., the believer in a country where gathering is a crime — streamed worship is a genuine mercy, and I thank God for it. I publish sermons and a podcast myself, gladly. Lone Trumpet exists because words can travel where a pastor cannot.

But I will tell you the truth about my own work: it is a supplement, not a substitute. A livestream cannot visit you in the hospital. It cannot hand you the bread and the cup — the Lord’s Supper is a meal, and nobody has ever been handed bread through a screen. It cannot baptize you. It cannot notice that you were missing this week, because to a video, everyone is missing, always. You can watch church the way you can watch cooking shows, and with the same result: genuinely educational, and you are still hungry. The one-anothers do not stream.

If church hurt you

Some of you were not bored; you were wounded — by gossip, by hypocrisy, by leaders who should have protected you and didn’t, or worse, were the danger themselves. I will not minimize that, and neither does Jesus. His tenderest words went to sinners, and His most blistering went to religious leaders who devoured the vulnerable while polishing the outside of the cup (Matthew 23). If a shepherd hurt you, the Chief Shepherd is not on the shepherd’s side.

So hear a pastor say it plainly: leaving that church may have been wisdom. Leaving the church hands the wound the last word, and it cuts you off from the very medicine — being truly known and truly loved by people who stay — that wounds like yours require. The supply of churches is mercifully larger than the one that hurt you. Find a different congregation, not a different gospel. And if part of the sting is the hypocrisy itself, I have written honestly about that too, in Why Are Christians Such Hypocrites?

How to find a healthy church

Healthy churches come in every size and many traditions — the differences between them are a long story I tell in Why So Many Denominations? — but the marks that matter are few and old. Look for these:

And what does not matter: production value. The band, the lighting, the fog machine, the coffee bar, the size of the parking lot — none of it. Some fine churches have excellent music; it is just not on the diagnostic list. A small church that loves you will do your soul more good than a large one that impresses you. Visit on an ordinary Sunday, give it more than one week, and pray before you go — the scriptures gathered at Bible verses about the church will tune your expectations to God’s rather than the brochure’s.

From “have to” to “get to”

I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD. Psalm 122:1

That is the destination: not a man gritting his teeth through an obligation, but a man glad at the invitation. Gladness like that is learnable, and it is learned the way most gladness is — by showing up before you feel it, among people who are glad you came. So no, nobody can make you go to church. But the question was never really “do I have to?” The question is whether you will keep eating alone when there is a family table set. Go this Sunday. Sit near the front; the back rows are for scouts, and you are done scouting. And if you are wondering which church, Why So Many Christian Denominations? will help you make sense of the choices.