The Church – The Body of Christ – Greg Albrecht

QUESTION: 

In your September Friends and Partners letter you discuss the church – I agree but I am concerned that some will feel, after reading your thoughts, that church attendance is not necessary. 

One of the important reasons to attend church, as I see it, is fellowship. Hebrews also mentions that we should not neglect meeting with one another. Do you have further thoughts?

RESPONSE:

Thank you! First, to set the context. I believe the decision to attend or not attend is peripheral to our faith – Paul explains in Romans 14 we can hold different opinions about a variety of less than core and essential beliefs – and honor one another. I respect and honor your feelings as a brother in Christ. 

That said, our September letter Who and What Is the Church? (Part 1) is clear: the church is the universal body of Christ. It may or may not be a building – it may or may not adhere to a specific nuanced creed or peripheral statements of faith. 

The church of Jesus Christ is his body – no one or no group may co-opt it and claim “membership” with its legal entity, in its building or baptism by someone it ordains is either 1) one and the same as the universal body of Christ, 2) nor can any affiliation or entity, of any nature, claim that Christ followers who do not subscribe to its definitions, standards or creeds are inferior Christians in some way, which would include a long un-Christlike shopping list of religiously imposed regulations, including required sitting in a building, believing in eternal conscious torment all the while giving lip service to God as love, believing that God “saves” a select group of Christians who adhere to teachings a particular denomination believes in – so that such folks are “raptured” while all others, non Christians and “inferior” Christians endure brutality, torture and death because … what, God loves them?! 

Really??? Sounds like fear religion to me … I could go on, but I shall spare you. I suggest we follow Christ, not religion which often morphs into Christless religion.

Fellowship? Primarily fellowship by God’s grace is with Father and Son (1 John 1:3) – anything less than that, any discussion or cups of coffee that pretends to diminish or replace fellowship with God is not fellowship with God. One may sit or stand in a building that calls itself a church and talk with others but such discussions are not de facto “fellowship.” The universal body of Christ is who we are, new creations in Christ, far more than a building we attend or not. 

In this age Christ followers can and do fellowship with people all over the world/ via the internet, podcasts, sermons, prayers, music, Bible studies, social media, emails and texts such as you and I are now doing – they may also fellowship with people who attend the same brick and mortar building as they do … but the gospel cannot be twisted in such a way that attendance in a particular building on a specific piece of real estate is “required” of Christ followers. Attendance or not is not “God’s will” – it is a choice, nothing more.

Hebrews does not command attendance in a building. The original readers were in fact being prepared for the fact that their holy place – the temple in Jerusalem – would be destroyed but Christ would not be – his church would continue and in fact did, very well, for several hundred years before institutionalized Christianity started building buildings and “herding” people into them. 

What? You mean Christ followers fellowshipped with God in the body of Christ without buildings?? Yes, they did then and I maintain they can do now. 

We have more to say in our October 2026 Friends and Partners letter Who and What Is the Church? (Part 2) which is, in fact, part 2 of this brief discussion.

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