“For I want very much to see you, so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, to be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Cultural Christianity was a real thing in this country for much of the 20th century and into the 21st. If you wanted to be someone, you had to be an active member of a church. Preferably a Mainline Denominational church, and the closer it was located to the center of town, the better. Gradually, though, the active member part was dropped in favor of merely an association with a church. Today, even that is mostly gone. The church really isn’t seen as a necessity anymore culturally, and that cultural trend is bleeding into the church itself. So, why does the church matter? Let’s talk about that as we continue Paul’s greeting to the Roman believers today.

I live in a cultural bubble. It’s pretty much just my town too. Maybe the bubble extends a little bit beyond our borders, but it certainly doesn’t encompass the whole county. Travel outside the bubble, and you’ll quickly run into all kinds of modern-world problems. Crime, poverty, and wokeness, just to name a few. But inside our bubble, you can experience small town America at its idyllic finest. Now, that doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It’s not hardly that. Small town drama is a real thing. But if you have any kind of a positive, nostalgic picture of a Main Street town in your mind, that’s us. And we love it. In fact, we’re growing because the word is out about what we have.

Inside our bubble, the church is still an honored, respected thing. Rec sports leagues don’t practice or play on Sundays or Wednesdays. School activities (at least for our local school) stay away from those days. At one point in the recent past, the mayor, police chief, fire chief, city manager, clerk, and a majority of the Town Council were all members of the First Baptist Church (which I have the privilege of pastoring). Why you still can’t buy alcohol before noon on Sundays here (I won’t tell you how I know that).

Yet even in spite of living in such an idyllic, American cultural bubble, people need a reason to be at church. Churches that expect people to be there because it’s what you’re supposed to do aren’t growing. They don’t tend to be thriving. They’re static at best. Even people who are church members need a reason to engage. When a church understands that reason and builds out their rhythms around it, they’ll come. When they don’t, they won’t.

That just begs the question: why should someone engage with the church?

Well, there are a number of different reasons for this depending on who you are and where you are in your journey toward Jesus. We can go through a full set of those another time. Today, let’s give our attention just to the reason Paul lays out for us here in the middle part of his greeting to the members of the church in Rome.

Paul is writing to active church members about why he wants to come and see them. That’s clear right out of the gate in this passage. “For I want very much to see you.” Paul loved the church. Passionately. He understood with crystal clarity that the church was (and is) the hope of the world. This doesn’t mean all churches are perfect or even good, but it does mean that without the church the culture and even the world would be a very different place and not in a good way (as even some atheists are starting to acknowledge as we will talk about tomorrow).

Paul spent a great deal of his time planting churches and encouraging and strengthening churches. He wanted to make sure they were fully equipped to do the kingdom work God designed them for. He wanted to make sure they were being the body of Christ which is indeed what the church is.

Yet the church doesn’t only exist for the world. The church exists for believers. When we get the church right, we don’t only make the world a better place, we make our own lives better. We make ourselves better, stronger, more faithful followers of Jesus. That’s what we see Paul talking about here. This is the reason we see here that being actively engaged with the church matters so much. Paul gives us two reasons in fact.

Paul wanted to see the church so that he could make them stronger. How? By imparting to them some spiritual gift. Did Paul have some gift in mind, or was this just a generic hope? I would argue for the former. Paul understood that every follower of Jesus has a particular spiritual gift or set of gifts from Him. He talked about this in several of his letters including this one. These gifts aren’t just talents or abilities we are born with. They are special gifts given by God’s Spirit on our conversion that are intended to be used to build up the body in love (see Ephesians 4).

Paul wanted to see the members of the church in Rome so that he could let them benefit from the spiritual gifts he had been given. If you are a follower of Jesus, He has given you gifts that are intended to be used to build up and strengthen the church. When you aren’t around, you are taking away from other believers the opportunity to gain what you can give, what God intends to give them through you. If they miss out on that gift because of your unfaithfulness, that’s something He’s going to hold you accountable for. You need to be actively engaged with the church because they need you.

You also need to be actively engaged with the church, though, because you need them. The giving Paul wanted to see happen on visit his was not one way. As much as he wanted them to benefit from what he could give them, he wanted to be strengthened and encouraged by what they could give him. He wanted for them “to be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”

Just as you have gifts that are unique to you, so do other members of Christ’s body. They need what only you can give, and you need what only they can give. You need the wisdom, encouragement, and accountability that the other members of the body can offer. If you don’t have that, you aren’t going to be as faithful or consistent to follow the path of Christ as you will be when you have it.

If you are a follower of Jesus (and that’s the group to whom Paul was writing here), you need to be engaged with a local body of Christ. I don’t just mean you need to go to church on occasion. You need to be fully engaged and invested in a body. You need to be there regularly, even to the point of saying no to other things in favor of the church. You need to be fellowshipping with the body both inside and outside of church times. You need to be worshiping and serving with your brothers and sisters in Christ. You need to be invested in their lives and to give them access to your own.

If you do that in conjunction with your active engagement with God through the Scriptures and prayer, you are going to grow in your faith and commitment to Christ. You are going to grow more fully into who God made you in Christ to be with the help of the Holy Spirit. You just about won’t be able to help it. If you don’t, you won’t. You not only won’t, but can’t be a fully functioning, healthy follower of Jesus apart from an active engagement with His body. But in that case, you won’t be the only one missing out. The rest of the church will be missing out on what God intends to give them through you as well. Everybody loses when a believer disconnects from the church.

What you can do with this is, I hope, fairly obvious. Get connected to the church. More importantly than that, get connected to a church. Prayerfully seek out the church near you where God is directing you to be able to have the impact on His kingdom He intends to have through you, and get plugged in there.

More than that, if you have kids, seek out the church near you that has created the kind of environment that will spark and encourage their own faith and love for the church. Even if that’s not the one you personally resonate with best, that’s where you need to be for their sake. Get connected there and show them by your commitment why the church matters and what it looks like to be connected to one. It may not change the world, but it definitely has the power to change your world.