You used to go to church regularly. But you don’t any more. You’ve stopped but you can’t shake this nagging guilt.
Why is that? Why do you feel like you should go back? Why is there a lingering sense that God is disappointed with you?
I still attend a church service just about every week. But I’ve noticed a number of people I talk to who know this make comments like, ‘I should get back to church.’ Why is that? I mean, they’ve obviously made a choice that church is not for them, but when they encounter a ‘church-goer’ some sense of unresolved guilt clearly surfaces…
Let's take a moment to ask why? Because I don’t think people need to live with guilt like this.
So here’s what I believe is behind the guilt in many cases:
What’s behind the guilt
‘Church' has become the distinguishing feature of a Christian. And by church, I mean a weekend service. I don’t believe that’s a good definition of church, certainly not when you look at what the Bible says about the church, but in Western society, a person’s status with God and as a Christian could be simplified down to how often they went to church.
You’ve been around church circles. You’ve heard people talk about Easter and Christmas Christians. You’ve heard others judge those or worry about those whose attendance had dropped off.
You might know theoretically that going to church doesn’t make you a Christian, doesn’t in itself make you any closer to God. But the rhetoric in Western Christianity is that it’s the cornerstone.
So in our mind, we stop going to ‘church’ and we cut off our connection with God. God’s no longer interested in us. We’ve drifted away. We’re the lost sheep.
This thinking ignores a number of factors.
Firstly, you might have a very legitimate reason for not going to a weekend church service. For example, you may have had a bad experience that did not reflect God’s plan for the church at all. You may have been hurt by those who were meant to care for you. These are not things you just quickly put to the side.
Second, going to a weekend service is a very narrow understanding of what church is. A formalised worship service is a form of church but you shouldn’t think it is the only expression of church or the superior one. You can creep in the back of a service and have no interaction with anyone else, listen in and then leave. You could do the exact same by watching on YouTube.
If you interact with other Christians to pray with and encourage each other in any way, you’re a lot closer to ‘church’ than someone who might be physically present in a church building but isolated from those around them.
Third, and this one might be sensitive, unfortunately I think that in some cases, guilt has been used to serve the purposes of the institutional church. A church leader has some pressure on them to be preaching to a full building. It doesn’t look good for them if people aren’t turning up.
So it’s not surprising that you hear messages encouraging you to be there at the service. It may be mostly out of concern for your spiritual health, but unfortunately there can be other motivations at play.
So how do we solve the issue of this nagging guilt?
Here’s a few questions to consider:
What’s the source of your guilt? What words of others are you listening to?
Why did you stop going to ‘church’? Have you sorted through that yet?
What was your past experience of church like? Did it fulfil the need for genuine fellowship with others? Were you serving the wider community together? Were you growing?
I think we all want to be moving forward, not back. And the reality is, that for you, going back to ‘church’ might feel like a step back, albeit a step back you feel will make you more of an acceptable Christian.
What if instead, you look at the reasons you moved away from church and use that as a prompt to consider what church should be.
You see, I think that we have come to define church too narrowly. When we lived in a church bubble everything seemed great. Now that you have moved away you have a new perspective.
Use that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go back to a weekend service. But if you do, don’t go back out of guilt. And don’t go back as if you never left.
You are not inferior because you haven’t been attending church every weekend. In fact, you probably have a lot to offer. You have a perspective that needs to be listened to.
And remember, your relationship with God shouldn’t hinge on an hour a week. It shouldn’t be defined by what others think- God is the only one who knows our hearts.
We need each other. We can’t live a fruitful life with God alone. But there are different ways that can look. So talk to God about where you fit.
If you have a close-knit group you message during the week and then meet to break bread and pray for each other does that resemble the sort of ‘church’ Jesus was a part of and set in motion?
I think there are many Spirit-led motivations to be at a church service, but guilt shouldn’t be one of them. And if it is, we should ask ourselves why.
A video version of this blog is available by visiting the content section of my website below.
Tom Anderson is pioneering www.haventogether.com, an online church plant supported by his in-person church, Catalyst, Ipswich. He has a young, growing family and enjoys playing backyard sport. Tom is a keen long-distance runner, averaging 21km each day last year. He has worked as a teacher for eleven years and enjoys perfecting a flat white on his home espresso machine. Tom would welcome a visit for a coffee some time… or an online catch-up via Zoom. See the Haven Together website to get in touch.
