Recently my wife and I committed to membership at our church, so lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what it means to be a part of a church. It seems to me that American Christians’ habit of church shopping is one of the most destructive symptoms of our consumerist society imaginable. Often, I can’t help but feel that we have forgotten what it means to be the body of Christ and what it means to be stubbornly loyal to one another, the way that Christ is stubbornly loyal to us.
Being recently married and even more recently a member of a church by my own choice for the first time, I can’t help but notice parallels between the two institutions. In marriage, two people join themselves together and create their own family. Somehow, they are mystically turned into one body, although both parties remain independent. They are expected to love each other and to be committed to one another in good and bad circumstances. Knowing each other’s faults and struggles, each partner encourages growth in the other in gentleness and love. Marriage is an institution that is bigger than both of the parties involved and not something that is easily dissolved in the eyes of G-d.

Although I feel that entering into marriage is more binding than becoming a member of a church, there are definite similarities and both should be seen as important commitments. Instead of becoming “one body” with just one other person, in being part of a church we are mystically joined to the whole. We become one body – the body of Christ. Together with all the other churches in the world we become The Church.  Like in marriage, we create a new family, with a new Father. We become brothers and sisters.  When we are a part of a church, we are joined, wedded, to the people who make it up.  Our lives become inescapably tangled up in theirs.

I feel like all this means that we, as churches and as the Church, need to regain a sense of commitment to one another. Like in a good marriage, we need to embrace one another’s short comings in love and in loyalty that is stubborn and unrelenting and walk with our brothers and sisters together towards the fulfillment of the Kingdom.  John wrote that we would be known as Christian by our love for one another.  Christ prayed that we could be one.  If we want to reflect that character of G-d to the world and to each other, we must stubbornly cling to one another as Christ does to each of us.  When we feel that our church is lacking in some area, our impulse should not be to leave and go somewhere where we feel that what we want can be found. We should instead try our best to be what we feel our church needs. We need to understand that we are contributing parts of a body, not shoppers receiving a product.

The “church shopping” state of mind cripples churches and destroys authentic community.  Because so many people go where they feel like they get what they need or where they fit in best, churches become places where people tend to look the same and folks think and feel alike. It’s comfortable, but this mindset tends to create churches with distinct traits and characteristics (charismatic, justice oriented, intellectual, mainstream evangelical, ritualistic, etc…) I can’t help but feel that this robs a church of the mosaic of opinions, orientations and giftings that make it healthy and balanced.   Perhaps if Paul was writing to us today, he might not feel that it was as important to tell an eye not to want to be a foot.   He might instead tell an eye not to go to a new face, as it leaves one body blind and another disfigured.