“My Church”
Whatever your relationship with the church is now, my hope for you is that you can someday say about a church you go to that it is “My Church.” Meaning you can confidently say “This is my church, and these are my people. I’m an engaged member of this community and I’m invested in our future.”
The “My Church” language actually comes from Jesus Himself. In an exchange with Peter somewhere in the middle of Jesus’ ministry (Matthew 16:13b-19), Jesus asks, a pivotal question: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” The disciples respond to Jesus with the rumors and murmurings of the people: “They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’” And then He hits them with the question in life: “‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’” This is the big question that we all have to answer at some point in our life. Peter, luckily, gets this one right:
“Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.’”
Did you catch that? We often center on if this scripture proves the beginning of the Catholic Church, or if this verifies Peter as the first of a new successive line of a singular church leader; but all of these miss the overall point: that the Church belongs to Christ, and it is comprised of those who have made this proclamation of faith that Jesus is the Messiah.
Here’s another way of thinking about the implications of Jesus’ statement:
Faith Check: You can’t be close to God and distant from the Church, because the first one to say this is “My Church” is Christ.
The church, the body of believers that you are a part of, belongs to Christ. You belong to Christ. We are His first and foremost. Attempting to reject or distance ourselves from the church is to try to distance ourselves from Christ. We really can’t do that, and we shouldn’t want to.
Three important realizations for Christians:
A popular trend over the past decade is to have a “spiritual life” or to retain one’s faith without being a part of a regular Christian community. Popular headlines have made the rounds saying some version of how people are “leaving the church, but not leaving their faith.”
This is a bit puzzling in more than a few ways, but here are three big reasons why our relationship with God can’t be separated from our relationship with the church.