Fellowship

So why do you go to church? We've determined it's not for the content; you can get content anywhere in this world, even right in your pocket. It's partially for the experience, but not really for the sensory experience of it because we've done pretty well at mastering the "home experience," all things considered. 

There's something about the human experience, but we left off yesterday saying that it's something even more than that. And it is. 

That something more is the fellowship. 

That's what takes the church experience up a notch. 

Let's go back to our movie theater analogy. We know that the movie is better when you see it in a theater because you have the emotional and physical realities of the other viewers to bounce off of. You laugh harder when others are laughing. You let the suspense capture you when you have the security of a room full of other persons. You weep a little more freely when the person next to you is reaching for a tissue. 

That's all well and good. It takes our movie experience to a deeper dimension. But once the lights come up and the credits roll and you go to the parking lot, then what? Unless at least one of the persons in that movie theater was your friend or relative or someone significant in your life, the experience is over. You can talk about it with anyone you want to, but you can't really share it with anyone else again. 

You don't know those persons. There's not going to come a point when you're going to run into one of those persons in a McDonald's somewhere and be like, "Hey, do you remember that time that we saw Ernest Goes to Jail in the theater together?" Even if that were to happen, they would probably look at you like you were crazy. You might have been there at the same time, but you weren't there together. 

Contrast that with a good friend who went to the movie with you and sat right next to you. Someone whose reactions helped to fuel your own, but someone who also noticed your reactions just as much as you noticed theirs. Now, when you're hanging out with your friend or your brother or your sister or whoever and you say something like, "Hey, you remember when we saw Ernest Goes to Jail together?" you can both just bust up laughing at that thing or that scene or whatever because you have a truly shared experience.

That is, at its very best, what church is supposed to be. Not just a human experience, but a shared human experience. 

A fellowship. 

These persons in the pews - they're your friends. Your good friends. Your brothers. Your sisters. These are the folks you are supposed to be able to look at at any point in your life and say, "Hey, do you remember the time....?" and they're supposed to go, "Yeah, I do!" And you both bust up laughing or crying or hugging or praying or whatever it is you do together in response to that moment you shared. 

See, a church isn't made by a bunch of folks being in the same place at the same time; it's made by a bunch of folks being together. Drawn into and connected with one another. (Which, by the way, is one of the most popular phrases of the New Testament - "one another.") 

That's really what we go to church for. It's not the content. It's not the experience. It's not even the human experience, although that gets us closer. It's the fellowship. The togetherness. The connection.