Why Should I Go to Church?

Rev. Todd R. Lattig

QUESTIONS TO GOD • Sermon • Submitted a year ago

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We might be able to believe in God, pray, and even worship alone, but in a community of faith, despite all its imperfections, we can connect, grow, and experience God’s love for us in ways we never could on our own.

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Transcript

Handout

Scripture Passage

Psalm 100 (NLT)

1 Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him, singing with joy. 3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God! He made us, and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. 5 For the Lord is good. His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness continues to each generation.

Focus Statement

We might be able to believe in God, pray, and even worship alone,

but in a community of faith, despite all its imperfections,

we can connect, grow, and experience God’s love for us in ways we never could on our own.

Point of Relation

Truth be told, I do not know where I would be without the church!

I have been in or connected to a church all my life, minus the 8 or so years I spent in Wicca, and even then I would occasionally visit my mom’s childhood church with her.

I was born and raised in the church.

I was baptized in the United Methodist Church, raised and confirmed in the Presbyterian Church USA, and while I was practicing Wicca, I got married in a United Methodist Church.

I am not sure I even shared that fact with the minister at the time…but it doesn’t matter because God knew what he was doing.

When it was time for me to finally return to the church and answer my call...

I returned back to United Methodism, where I found a home in grace and LOVE.

Vernon United Methodist Church is where Bernie and I ended up...

we had Katie and Lorien baptized there....

And that is where I began to answer the call God placed on my life at such an early age.

That community in Vernon blessed me in so many ways.

They saw and affirmed the call I had...

They gave Bernie and I a place to raise our children in faith and a place to serve...

I would not be the pastor I am today if it weren’t for the opportunities that church gave me and trusted me with.

It was there that I discovered my passion for teaching, for preaching, for pastoral care, and without those people in my life, I may have never made it to ordination or beyond.

That’s not to say everything went smoothly all the time, or that there weren’t people or circumstances that weren’t challenging...

Find a single family, organization or otherwise without those same challenges...

But, in the end, they loved me and my family unconditionally and I still look forward to running into them because they are family to me.

And I have found that same sense of community in all the churches I have served. FAMILY is at the core of what church community is.

Things to Consider

Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic both isolated us from community

and clearly showed us the negative effects of not having regular moments of connection.

We have seen a rise in depression and feelings of isolation.

Speaking of which, I want to acknowledge it is perfectly normal to be struggling with depression.

And as I have in the past, I am willing to talk with anyone struggling and help you find support and counseling.

With that said, COVID-19 has reminded us that we were created to be social beings.

Community with God and with others is hardwired in our DNA.

What Scripture Says

Psalm 100 was originally written as a hymn to be sung by the people of Israel as they entered the temple in Jerusalem.

I want you to Imagine traveling for miles on foot and standing at the bottom of the Temple Mount waiting to climb the stairs

leading to the only place you believed God’s presence was revealed on earth.

How excited would you be?

This hymn was the means by which the people expressed their joy and excitement as they climbed to the temple.

It is a hymn of thanksgiving.

Psalm 100 is filled with imperative verbs:

Shout!

Worship!

Enter!

Praise!

Bless!

The people were commanded to express all of this passion together.

In verse 3, the word “know” is even imperative.

Together the people will intimately know God.

This passionate life-changing event doesn’t and can’t happen individually,

it happens together.

God’s people will also experience God’s goodness together (as we see in verse 5).

We see the importance of community in the New Testament as well.

Paul’s use of the terms “the body of Christ” and “the temple of the Holy Spirit”

are rooted in the idea of the importance of community we find in Psalm 100.

You or I are not the temple of the Holy Spirit, WE are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

WE experience God in and through each other (the Church community).

What This Means for You

Has the community of God been a blessing for you?

Has a church community hurt you or made you feel like an outsider?

Psalm 100 proclaims that we are called to enter this place together with joy and passion.

You have been called to this place to experience God with each other; we can’t do this alone.

Look around you (ask them to look around the room);

because of your fellow siblings, you can experience the powerful presence of God today.

If you are angry with someone in this community, make peace with them.

If you need to ask forgiveness, do it today.

Our worship and our experience of God is inhibited when we distance ourselves from each other.

What This Means for Us

I want toChallenge each of you to invite at least one person to Easter Sunday service.

You could all invite a FRAN! Do you know who I am talking about? Good ol’ FRAN?

In other words you could invite a

FRIEND

RELATIVE

AQUAINTENCE

OR A NEIGHBOR

FRAN, if you didn’t just notice, stands for friend, relative, aquaintence and neighbor.

I want you all to take a few minutes and pray that God will bring to mind a person or persons in one or more of those categories.

Henry will play music while we pray and ask God to put a person or even more than one person to our minds out of any of the FRAN categories.

Friends, I want to encourage you to trust in the Holy Spirit’s leading

and ask this individual or individuals to join you on Easter Sunday for the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.