The Local Church Is Essential and Critical

Wise and powerful words from Thabiti Anyabwile:

When I say the local church is essential and critical, I mean essential and critical the way a pacemaker is to a person with a diseased heart.  You can’t live without it.  When I say it’s essential and critical, I mean essential and critical the way a nursing mother is to an infant.  He won’t grow and be nourished without it.  When I say the local church is essential and critical, I mean essential and critical the way a husband and wife’s loyalty and fidelity are essential and critical are to a trusting, loving marriage. You cannot love without it. The local church is to be the central set of relationships, of belonging, to our spiritual lives.

To put it another way, to put it in the negative: if membership in a healthy, local church is not central to your understanding of the Christian life and your daily living, your worship, you are slowly—perhaps imperceptibly—starving, shriveling, and becoming loveless. Even if you don’t feel it.