The Worlds Okayest Pastor

You Cannot Follow Jesus While Ignoring His Church

• Jason Cline

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Start with a hard sentence: you can’t follow Jesus while ignoring His church. From there, we open up a candid, Scripture-soaked exploration of what church really is, why gathering isn’t optional, and how a messy, imperfect community becomes the place where transformation takes root. We push past the building and the brand to recover the biblical picture of a people formed by Jesus, devoted to one another, and focused on mission.

We walk through Hebrews to see Christ as the head of the church—the high priest who establishes a better covenant and the builder who promises His church will endure. Then we trace the early church in Acts, where believers arrange their lives around teaching, prayer, breaking bread, generosity, and courage under pressure. Along the way, we confront modern drift: treating Sundays like entertainment, assuming online-only faith can sustain discipleship, and making church attendance an optional extra rather than the context for growth.

The conversation turns to 1 Corinthians, where Paul addresses division, compromise, disorder, and loveless gifting. His solution isn’t withdrawal; it’s deeper commitment to unity, holiness, ordered worship, and love that actually bears with one another. We talk plainly about discomfort, hurt, and frustration—and why those tensions, worked through in love, shape resilient disciples. If Jesus loves the local church, created it, and uses it to carry the gospel forward, then showing up, participating, and building others up isn’t just a habit; it’s obedience and joy.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s searching for real community, and leave a review to help others find the conversation. Your story helps someone else take a step toward a church they can love and serve.

SPEAKER_00:

For who you are. I pray this message this morning lands exactly where it needs to. God, I pray that it's convicting. I pray that it's challenging. But I also pray that it's encouraging. A lot of times when we look at scripture, we we come across things that that should challenge us. At everything we read in the Bible, I believe it should always make us slightly uncomfortable. Because the whole idea of being transformed is by reprioritizing our life to be like yours. And that's not always easy, especially in our culture. So I pray this morning that those who listen to this now, who are here, those who might listen to this later, those who are even watching online, God, I pray that you protect them. That you allow them to hear what they need to hear. You allow them to be challenged. You allow them to be convicted. You allow them to help them realize that you're calling us to be something that oftentimes goes against our nature. Protect these words. Protect the hearts that they're connected to. Protect the relationships that they're connected to. I love you. I thank you. She says. Amen. So if you didn't notice, my prayer is a little more, a little different this morning. Because I believe that what I'm about to say is what God is calling me to say, but but I also have the realization that it's connected to people and people have feelings and people have emotions. I know sometimes we we talk about stuff in church and and people get offended. They get upset. People tell me all the time I didn't like what you said. And my response to them is I didn't say it. I don't believe I did. I believe that the Spirit in me. I trust the Spirit in me. You guys have no idea the things that I don't say and the things that I say up here. I I wholeheartedly trust that God has laid them on my heart. It's never intentional. I'm never coming at you. I promise. I don't sit around going, how can I mess with Greg today in my sermon on Sunday? I don't have like a hit list, right? But but I think that when we honestly teach scripture, scripture should challenge us. It should make us uncomfortable. So I say all of that, and then I want to clarify something real quick. When I talk about the word church in this context, I am not talking about a particular building. This is a church. Not because it's a church building. This is a church because there are people here who follow Jesus. You and I make this a church. Don't get that confused. We could have church in my living room. We do every Thursday night. You can have church on the property. You can have church in your house. You can have church at work. Like where there ever there's a gathering of people who are following and building each other up for the kingdom of God, that's the church. So don't ever misinterpret that. But I also need to be very clear because I hear all the time that people say, Well, listen, I don't need to go to church because I can find God anywhere. 100% agree with that. God's not attached to a place. When the temple was destroyed and Jesus died and the Holy Spirit filled us, God wants mobile. You and I don't go to a temple to worship. That doesn't make sense. God has done away with those things. So you are right when you say that you do not need to go to church to find God. But I will say this: you cannot fulfill the mission of Jesus and not be plugged into a body of believers. You can't. It is impossible. Not only is it possible, it it goes against everything Scripture teaches us. We're going to be bouncing around the book of Hebrew and the book Hebrews and the book of 1 Corinthians today. I think we have to understand, and again, when I talk about the church, you and I are called to be part of a gathering of believers. This is biblical. Even if you go back to the Old Testament, they gathered together in the temple. That's where they gathered. But like temple life was so important to their life. It was built in. They didn't just go to the temple. Their life was actually built around the schedule of the temple. The Jews understood, Israel understood that the worship of God was priority. And so they built their life around that. And so when we move to the book of Acts and we see that the church goes mobile and we start seeing house churches pop up everywhere, you have to understand the early church built their life around the mission of Jesus. It wasn't convenient, it wasn't easy. It won against Rome. It brought oppression. It brought persecution. It caused so many problems for them. But they understood that the mission of gathering together was necessary. It was vital to their existence. They had to have one another because no one else was going to be for them. And so you and I have to understand that being part of a gathering of believers is necessary. I do not believe, nor do I believe that Scripture teaches it as optional. Couple weeks ago, when I talked about how I was discouraged, was that I'm not discouraged because there's not a bunch of people here. I don't need an audience. I'm discouraged because I believe with everything in me that Sunday morning is one of the most important things we do together. Not the only thing. But becoming together as believers, these gatherings, right? The purpose of them is not, mind how I say this, is not to worship God. That's important. We do that. God doesn't need you to stand here on Sunday mornings and worship him. You can worship him anywhere. In all reality, he doesn't need your worship at all. He's God. But but we don't come here on Sunday mornings to worship God. We talk this about it's a worship service. We're here and we praise God and we listen to the word of God. Listen, those are all good things. But but this gathering together believers is so much more than just worshiping God. It's this idea that you and I come together and we build each other up. Paul talks about this in his letter to the church and in Corinth, that we're supposed to be edifying to each other. Charles Spurgeon said this if I had never joined a church till I had found the one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all. And the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it. Still, imperfect as it is, it's the dearest place on earth to us. The church matters. Church is uncomfortable. Church isn't perfect. We're not. We are a bunch of like-minded people who come together for one purpose. And that's to follow God. So, what does Jesus say about the church? Let's talk about this. Jesus, so the Bible tells us that Jesus is the head of the church. Revelation 1 through 2 tells us he's the ultimate revelation. The knowledge of Jesus is the ultimate culmination of everything we've seen in Scripture. Jesus is greater than Moses. Can you imagine being an Israelite and hearing that one of your founding fathers, that this new guy who showed up for 33 years is greater than he is. That's what it teaches us. He's our high priest. He's the one in charge. He's created a better covenant than the Old Testament covenant. He died. He sacrificed himself. Jesus calls us to persevere. Jesus is the reason why the church exists. Don't misunderstand anything. This church is only here because of who he is. Without Jesus, this is not a church, it's a country club. But Jesus builds his church. Matthew 16, 18 says, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Ephesians 5, 25, Paul writes, Christ loved the church and he gave him up, gave himself up for her. So as we gather together, people know that we are followers of Jesus by the way we love each other. Matthew 28, 19 through 20 says, Go and make disciples of all the nations. Jesus says, you know, he says, Go into the world, make disciples, teaching them to obey everything that I have taught. By the way, as we continue through the rest of the New Testament, what Jesus teaches is that getting together regularly, so going to church, being part of a church, is obedience to the message of the gospel. Jesus calls us to gather together. Jesus prays uh John 17, 21, it says, they um that they may be all one, so that the world may believe you have sent me. He prays for our unity. Not perfection, but you and I have one goal, one purpose, and that's to be unified. What makes the church so brilliant is it's a bunch of different people who come from a bunch of different backgrounds, all for the same purpose. Matthew 22, 2 says, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepares a wedding banquet for his son. You continue on, Jesus talks about his church as his bride. Jesus is in love with the local church, the local gathering of people. He he created it, he ordained it, he loved it, he he established it. He knew that the local church would be the way that the message of the gospel would carry on. Go back to the book of Acts at a lot of house churches. That's what they did. They met in each other's homes, they they prayed together, they shared together, they invited other people in. And then at some point throughout history, the church became more centralized. We started seeing buildings and cathedrals and beautiful stained glass windows. You know, the the the irony of church participation, the irony of church attendance, uh really the the effectiveness of the gospel, if you if you watch throughout history, the the move of the gospel actually lessened the more church buildings were established. I don't think that was an accident. Because at some point we we took church to be this idea of this something that we went to on Sunday morning for an hour and a half. And if your church had the biggest cathedral, the the most beautiful stained glass, you were the church that everyone knew. And then you get into the 90s and we have the worship wars. I don't know if you guys remember any of that, but that the landscape of church changed, that all of a sudden it's about big, flashy lights and and lots of instruments and paid musicians. And listen, I'm I'm not saying those things are bad, but what I'm saying is at some point in the last 30 years, we've lost sight of what the church is supposed to be. It's not meant to entertain us, it's not meant to make us feel good. And listen, if you if your hope is to come in here and make and every sermon I give you makes you feel good, then I have failed to do what God has called me to do. That's not why we read the scriptures, right? That that's not why we study. By the way, if you read the book of Hebrews, it it helps us to understand who Jesus is. Paul uses the entire book to show us who Jesus is. By the way, I misquoted myself earlier. Everything I said earlier was through the book of Hebrews. So know this. We've been studying. Uh has been doing a great study of it through our men's prayer breakfast. But Paul writes the letter of Hebrews, and he helps them understand that Jesus is ultimately the one who's in charge. But again, we you and I, we've lost sight that the church is supposed to be for us, about us. And listen, to an extent, it is. But but but not in the way we think. Like church, if you are part of a church that always makes you comfortable, I would say that you're there, and that's probably not a healthy place for you. And I realize that. And I realize that people get upset about that. If you are someone, and listen, I need to say this with the utmost love and respect and understand where my heart is coming from. I understand that there are reasonable reasons that why people watch church online. But if the only church you go to is online church, then you're still not doing it right. That is not what you and I are called to do. That's an incredible resource. But we are called to gather together. We we are called to be the body, we are called to be the church. But but all of that fails in comparison to the reality that Jesus loves the church. He created it. This is his creation. Somewhere along the line, we screwed it up. We made it about us. But but the church was designed for his purpose. So that people from different cultures, different backgrounds, different diversities, different walks of faith can come together for the sole purpose of spreading the message of the gospel. So to be someone who says you follow Jesus, you are not following Jesus if you're not plugged into a local church. You're not. You cannot look at scripture, you cannot go through the New Testament and believe that not going to church is an option. Not coming together with a gathering of people is just something you can choose to do on occasion. That's not how the early church worked. They met together regularly. The book of Acts tells us this. They prayed together, they fed together, they ate together, they served together, they they met each other's needs. They were this force to be reckoned with, not because they were perfect, not because they were great, but because they gathered together and they participated. They showed up and they followed Jesus. You cannot follow Jesus and ignore his church. You can't. It's impossible. You yeah, if you look at the letters that Paul writes, almost every single letter writes, every single letter Paul writes is to a church. It's to a gathering of believers who are just trying to navigate life. But church has become optional. We wonder why the the world is the way that it is. We we wonder why there's so much division. We wonder why there's there's so much hatred. It's because our culture has effectively gotten rid of the need to gather together. So many people wake up every Sunday morning. I cannot tell you the amount of people on Sunday morning. And listen, I realize that churches, some churches meet on Saturdays and things like that, but but I cannot tell you the amount of people that as I drive through my neighborhood on church, uh, after church on Sunday, that I see them out there cutting the grass and they've been doing it all morning. Because for we as a culture have decided that that going together and being together regularly with other believers is not necessary, and then we wonder why God feels so far away. Listen, church is ugly, man. I love all of you. But it's ugly sometimes. We don't always like each other. Sometimes things happen that hurt us. Brett McCracken, I just started reading a book called Uncomfortable. The awkward and essential challenge of Christian community. By the way, the first two chapters of this book, I think I highlighted everything. But Brett McCracken says this says many Christians today have no problem disengaging from local church life and opting instead for a largely me and Jesus faith that only occasionally overlaps with the complex requirements of community. I can relate to the many who choose this sort of relationship to church, says I sympathize with their frustration with churches and the bothersome types of people who inhabit them. But the Christian life cannot be an individual affair. The church is necessarily plural. To say you love Jesus but not the church is to say you prefer decapitated head. That's creepy. That doesn't work biblically. It says we are the body of Christ. A head needs a body, and a body needs a head. So again, and I know we said I just kind of hit through it, but but Hebrews establishes Christ as the head of the church. And so Paul, as he gets into 1 Corinthians, he's going to talk about the importance of coming together as believers. You know, I was thinking about this earlier today, and maybe some of you have seen it because I I've probably shared it a few times. But this idea that uh there was this video floating around, and um, I don't know if you know about the the church in Corinth, but the first letter to the church in Corinth was rough. So there's this video around that these guys put together, and it's someone who's standing in the first, who's standing uh amidst the congregation of the Corinth church, and he says, Oh, look, a letter from Paul, and he opens it up and it punches him in the face. By the way, that pretty much articulates what Paul is getting at here because the church in Corinth had had a ton of problems. They were divided. Chapters one through four, they're they're divided. Some are following Paul, others Apollos, others they're following Peter. Paul rebukes them and says, listen, it going back to what he writes in Hebrews, it's not about me, it's about Jesus. Don't don't lose sight of that. And then he addresses the sin and discipline, uh, chapters 5 through 6, that the church was allowing and tolerating sexual morality. They were actually promoting it. They were okay with it. They were going against what they had been taught to make it look like it was okay. And Paul says, listen, we can't we can't do this. We're called to be holy, we're called to live the way that God has called us. He says in um 1 Corinthians 6, 19 through 20 that you were not your own. You were bought with a price. He said your life now belongs to Jesus. Chapter 7 through 10, 10, he talks about marriage, singleness, and freedom. Paul loves the idea of marriage, but he says if you can't be married, it's okay to be single. He actually says it himself that being single has some benefits. Listen, I realize some of you are single and you frustrate, and it frustrates you because you haven't found the one. Paul talks about being single, that it's a good thing. He can, God can still use you in your singleness. He does it all the time. Sometimes there's more freedom in that. But he says if you're married, you and your partner are one. Man and woman together. That's what he teaches. That's what the Bible teaches, that we come together, one flesh, and God uses your marriage as a model for the world. Chapters 11 through 14. He he talks about that there's worship. And he talks about these ideas when they gather together that there has to be order in the church. He he rebukes them for their abuse of the Lord's Supper. He he rebukes them for not taking care of each other's needs. And we get to chapter 13, which is the all-famous love chapter. And every wedding I've ever been to, everyone reads the love chapter. That's amazing. But 1 Corinthians 13 is written to the church, not to the husband and wife. Paul calls us to love each other. Because it is only in that love we find unity. Chapter 15, he gets to uh that talks about Jesus and his resurrection. And then he ends with a final exhortation, which is what he normally does in all of his letters. But one, I want I want you to go home and and I want to encourage you to read Hebrews and First Corinthians. Because I I know I kind of like kind of sped through them this morning, but but but there's two important things that have to happen here. One, we have to understand that Jesus is in charge. This is not my church. It's not your church, this is his church. And I can tell you from a leadership standpoint that everything we've done over the last couple of years has been done with great amount of prayer and trusting and listening to the Holy Spirit as He leads and He guides us. Every decision we've made, nothing has been done hastily. I promise you that. I sit in this room with these men monthly, sometimes more, and we pray and we seek and we just want to do exactly what God is calling us to do. And we do the same thing with the property. We're praying over it. Even now, that that's what that's what this is. Listen, this is not a wish or a dream. This is not a uh God's not a genie when we're saying, give us what we want. This is us praying that we are doing what God wants us to do. Because if that's not it, then I want to know. I don't want to, I don't want to do this for us because it's not our church. It's his, it's his ministry. You and I participate. But we also have to understand that you and I, this this church, this physical church here in this place, doesn't exist if you don't show up. If people stop coming, if people start making this optional, if people start treating the local church like it's just something we do every now and then, it will disappear. Statistically speaking, 42 churches closed their doors this morning in the hour and a half that you and I have been here. Because people stopped showing up, people didn't make it important enough. But the church, the gathering together of believers, is established by Jesus. It's his plan. He created it, he designed it, he's in charge of it. You and I are just here. But we have to be here. We cannot fulfill what it is to make disciples of the world. If church is just something we occasionally do. The truth is, is I need you. And you need me. Life is hard. We live in a world that is becoming more and more divided than it ever has before. Live in a culture that that tells us that gathering together as believers is something we can do on occasion. Or or we resired ourselves to to be online Christians only. And I said I I just don't see it. This this journey you and I are on, or it's not an individual effort. We need each other. The church, the the gathering together of believers, and and listen, there's there's a reason I had to clarify that. Because I'm not saying you have to be here in this building. I would love for you to be. I love all of you. This is the best part of my week, believe it or not. Some of you stress me out, but I still love you. Some of you, every time I see you, I'm like, I cannot wait for this conversation because it's gonna be good. I, Rob, you don't know this, but I hold on to weird stuff that my kids say. So when I write it down, when I see you, I can remember to tell you because Rob thinks it's funny like I do. Like I look forward to these moments. Like, this is what Sunday is. We get together, we build each other up, we we laugh together, we cry together, we we hurt together. So that when we walk into Monday morning, we're ready to go. I'm not trying to make people feel bad, but I'm telling you, you cannot truly fulfill the mission that God has called us to. If we're not gathering together with a regular group of believers who are seeking Jesus. Currently in the world, only three out of ten of adults go to church. Thirty percent of the population. Church attendance continues to be something we don't do. The the gathering together of believers, this idea that that I can find God on my own. 100% agree. You can't. But I also 100% agree that that's not enough. Hebrews 10, 24 through 25 says, and let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another. First Corinthians 12 27 says, Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is part of it. Psalm 95, six. Come let us bow down and worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. Matthew 18, 20, where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them. Acts 2, 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayer. Matthew 4, 4, man shall not live by bread alone, by every word by the mouth of God. Psalm 19, 8 says the came the command of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. Matthew 28, 19, 20 already said this, but go and make disciples of all nations. This is what Jesus has called us to do, to go and make a difference in the world. But before you and I can step into making a difference, we have to come together and build each other up. We have to refocus ourselves. Listen, that the name refocus comes from that idea that we are trying to help people refocus their life on what matters. Jesus. And you find Jesus here in this place among all of these broken people. Church isn't perfect. It's full of broken people. Sometimes we love the people we sit next to, sometimes we can't stand them. But that's what makes us beautiful. Because at the end of the day, our purpose is to see. Jesus and to show the world that it doesn't matter where we come from, if He is our focus, then it's all going to be okay. Church matters. Gathering together with other people is a necessity. For those who follow Jesus, this is not optional. We need this. I need you. Like I said, you need me. We need each other. Because to fulfill the mission that Jesus has called us to, we cannot do this on our own. I see people all the time who try to find God outside of the church. And I'm telling you, my experience is they walk away from God faster than you would think. Because it's not enough. The church, Jesus created it. If Jesus loves the church in spite of all of its weirdness, if Jesus believes in the church as something he established, this gathering together of believers, if he believes that he built something that Hades cannot overcome, if he loves this, then you and I should love it too. Let's pray.