Worship God in Church or in Nature?

Sometimes you hear folks justify not attending church be saying something like… “nature is my church” or “I can get closer to God on a mountain top than in a church building”.

Certainly God created nature and it testifies to his existence but does God really want people substituting nature for church? I think not.

Jesus after all in Matthew 16 said that he himself would “build the church”. What kind of sense does it make that Jesus would build a church and make attendance or congregation optional? Here… let me answer that… it makes no sense.

The church is somewhat analogous to the jewish synagogue. Did Jesus attend the synagogue services? Of course he did and so did the apostles.

Those folks who want to go out in nature by themselves to worship God fail to consider what the purpose of the church is.

The church was designed by Jesus Christ to help Christians reach spiritual maturity. Which begs the question… can Christians reach spiritual maturity without the church? If they could then why did Jesus Christ die to establish the church? Why didn’t he just say climb up on that mountain, or look at the stars or watch a bird sing a song and that’s your spiritual service to me?

We can go and observe nature and think about God and his majesty and in fact I recommend it. But on Sundays, Christians need to be in church being encouraged and being built up, serving each other and practicing love towards each other. That’s what Jesus Christ expects of us and is what makes him happy.