Christianity, properly lived, is never a spectator sport. It necessitates participation and cooperation with others. Many people try to remain anonymous in church, but they are cheating themselves. A person who merely attends a church service without participating is just viewing a variety show of sing-alongs and speeches where the hat is passed midway to reward the performers. And the variety show is held at a really inconvenient time.
But the true Christian knows that there is so much more than mere attendance. To get the full value, we must join the community, with all the messiness and uncertainty that comes with it. There is no place for solo acts in the community of believers. Everything happens in concert with others. In community there is strength, commitment, and relationships to bridge the inevitable distractions and uncertainties that occur in communities. When one member falters, the rest pick up the slack with the knowledge that when their turn to falter arrives, they won't be left out in the cold. When we are aggravated by another member of the community, we remember when we were the aggravator and we wait for things to settle down. Then we continue as a community. When we have a church community, we have much more than a clubhouse to go to on Sunday. We have a family to lean on, to support, and to work things out with over the long haul.
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