Why the Church_ - Sunday AM Sermon
Teachers
Lesson Summary
Pastor Richard Sutton addressed the growing trend of Americans—particularly passionate believers called "revolutionaries" by demographer George Barna—who are abandoning the church while maintaining their faith. According to Barna's research, 30 million Americans and five out of six Americans overall believe the church is unnecessary for spiritual growth or closeness to God. These individuals prioritize personal, private faith over communal participation, often adopting the mentality that "going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car." Sutton countered this individualistic approach by establishing that Jesus came specifically to build a church—the ekklesia, a people called out of the world and into community. He emphasized that Christianity was never intended to be purely private; while the relationship with Christ is personal, it was always designed to be both vertical (with God) and horizontal (with one another). Sutton presented three foundational reasons why the church is essential: first, we are created with an inherent need for relationships and fellowship; second, the church provides New Testament koinonia—a deep fellowship that shares life, pain, disappointments, and joy bound together by Christ's blood; and third, human beings from infancy to old age require community and connection to thrive emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Sutton grounded his teaching in Scripture, particularly Ephesians 4:11-16 (about equipping the saints for ministry and building up the body), Acts 2 (the addition of believers to the church), and Hebrews 10:24-25 (exhorting believers not to forsake assembly). The core message challenged the cultural myth of solitary spirituality and reaffirmed that God designed His people for collective purpose and mutual encouragement.
Key Scriptures
God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.