Church was a good place for me when I first decided to be a follower of Jesus, but after some years it meant no more to me than trotting into the sanctuary on a Sunday morning, staring at the back of someone’s head for an hour, and then trotting back home again. And I could see that I’d still be sitting there half a century later, singing the same hymns, praying the same prayers, listening to the same tired sermons preached by a tired preacher as depressed preaching them as I would be listening to them. I’d be like a sixty year old in a push chair.  

But I’m a Christian author, newspaper columnist and broadcaster, so perhaps it’s understandable that people are surprised when I tell them I don’t go to church. They say, ‘Why don’t you go to church?’ I tell them, ‘Three reasons: I don’t need to, I don’t want to, and I don’t have to.’

Usually they say, ‘But the Bible says you have to go to church!’ And I say, ‘Does it?’ And they say, ‘Yes it does… somewhere!’ Occasionally someone will quote Hebrews 10:25; ‘Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another,’ and I agree, but does that mean we are to restrict ‘meeting together’ to an hour on a Sunday morning? Are we to limit ‘encouraging one another’ to a pious group in a holy building? Or could it be that this life of faith means living lives of love 24/7?

Sunday mornings will often find my wife and me walking along the beautiful North Down coast near to where we live. Sometimes our conversation is light and we laugh a lot, at other times we’ll be grappling with some weighty family issue. But either way, we always enjoy each other’s company. We enjoy God’s company too, and mostly we’re aware that he’s enjoying ours. Don’t ask me how I can be sure, I can only say that there’s a deep knowing in our spirit; we’re like three old friends. We do that most Sunday mornings, and I have to say that in all the years I regularly attended my ‘place of worship’ because I thought I had to, I can’t remember ever enjoying such rich and meaningful fellowship with my creator and my best friend.

So what is church? Some say it’s a place where you go to ‘get good teaching,’ but that flies in the face of what Jesus said about teaching. He said, ‘...don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi’ – meaning ‘my honoured teacher’ – for you have only one Teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.’ And the writer of the letter to the Hebrews said much the same when he quoted Jeremiah the Prophet, ‘I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. They will not need to teach their neighbours, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, “You should know the Lord.” For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already.’

Others say, ‘O, you have to be accountable!’ Well, I’m not sure about that one either. Six hundred years before the Jesus came, a different Prophet; Ezekiel, foretold his arrival. He said the shepherds of Israel had abused their position and God would soon remove them for good. He said, ‘You shepherds, you abandoned my flock, you left them to be attacked by every wild animal, you didn’t search for my sheep when they were lost. You took care of yourselves and left the sheep to starve. Now you shepherds, I will take away your right to feed the flock, and I will stop you from feeding yourselves too. I will rescue my flock from your mouths; the sheep will no longer be your prey, and I will set over you all, one shepherd, the Good Shepherd.’

To say that we will go astray unless we are accountable to men is to accuse this Good Shepherd of being unwilling or unable to look after his own. And we do church no justice by limiting its activities to a Sunday morning, to a building with a spire that points to heaven saying, ‘He’s up there you know!’ when we should know that Jesus promised he would make his home with his people, in their hearts.

Jesus’ model was, ‘...go into all the world and preach,’ but our religious system makes that difficult. It demands that the world comes to meet it, where it is comfortable. Paul the Apostle’s model was for the more mature men of God to ‘...prepare God's people for works of service,’ to equip them to go and ‘do the stuff’ as John Wimber used to say, but today’s religious system is so deeply flawed that even if the preacher is the best equipper in the world, it demands that they keep coming back to maintain their position of power – and fill the coffers of the wealthiest organisation in the world!

So that’s why I don’t go to church, but then again I do go to Church, a Church that meets on a coastal path on a Sunday morning, or in a neighbour’s house mid-week, or in a bar on a Friday night, or in a café any lunchtime. And I’m sure that’s what Paul had in mind when he penned his long neglected blueprint. Let’s allow him to define the Church I go to: ‘When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight... no more than two or three speakers at a meeting, with the rest of you listening and taking it to heart. Take your turn, no one person taking over.’

That’s the ‘Big Wide Canopy Church,’ and I love it!