Dealing with False Dichotomies: "Don't go to church, be the church"
Have you heard this one before? It's pretty popular these days to have people say, "Don't go to church. Be the church!" As if the two were mutually exclusive. As with many false dichotomies , this one comes from a place of good intentions. Saying "be the church," is a way of pushing back against the false idea that merely going to church on Sunday is what it means to be a follower of Christ. Now, there is absolutely a sense in which we are called to "be the church." For instance, But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10) However, Scripture also speaks of church as the local assembly of believers who gather together around God's Word an...