In our time, we are familiar with the phenomenon of “believing without belonging to the church.” New terms are being coined for this, such as “religion-shopping” and “solo-religious.”   That implies something such as ‘I don’t want to be pressured; I want to believe without having someone tell me what to believe or making demands on me.’  The church, then, is seen as an institution that takes upon itself the authority to determine what is Christian faith and what is not.  That background, explains the interest in the ‘heretics’ of earlier church history.  Whoever asserts that the official church showed the minorities the door, with a more or less hard hand, finds a willing ear.

This tendency totally fits into our time, with its emphasis on human autonomy and individuality.  We do not let someone dictate the law to us.  At the same time, we do want our lives to make sense and have meaning.  The word authenticity has been purloined as a descriptor for this yearning without commitment.

The result of this is that relationships in society are put under pressure and crumble.  In the established church, as well, the nature of involvement changes.  The way of God with His church through history says little to many people anymore, and an outlined or clear cut confessional identity no longer plays the role that it used to.  In particular, the younger generation goes to the place where they feel ‘at home.’  When people, today, go to church, they decide for themselves ‘how far they will let it go.’  People speak about “believing without belonging’, or ‘believing without desiring to belong.’  One of the trends of today is that people gather together with a few others in a living room or den and hold a sort of service.  We need to have an answer for these recent developments.

Created for God⤒🔗

It is difficult for us to imagine how differently people used to think about God and the world.  In our time, we ourselves are the pivotal point of our thinking – and God is the question.  We are here and we will take from life whatever we can, but does God exist?  It appears that this mode of thinking is the only reasonable one.  When your point of departure is yourself, your right to be yourself, it is the only possibility that is feasible.  The question of whether God exists can not be answered with assurance, therefore the doubt about the existence of God or the simple disinterest in His existence or non-existence is the rule and the believer is more or less a rare exception.  It sounds so plausible that quite a few church members are drawn into it.

Is this viewpoint truly the only reasonable way to live?  No, for although man pretends that it is only about rational thinking, it is, in fact, a choice to see life in this manner.  There are also good reasons to put on another pair of ‘glasses..  Calvin delights in using the metaphor of glasses.  He demonstrates in Book 1 of the Institutes how you, no matter how you view it, are eventually confronted with questions which can only be answered in one way.  Look at the world around you, how it interrelates and how there is life and growth; then, your thoughts automatically are drawn to God, the Creator and Upholder.  Would you sooner begin with yourself?  Fine also, but then look at all that comes upon you in life, and see what a strange, often loveless and thankless being you are - then you bow your head in shame before God.  Left or right, you can not go around God and you also can not get around yourself as you are in relation to him.

Herman Bavinck, the great theologian from the tradition of the Liberation, lived in another era than Calvin.  He was aware of all the different religions in the world.  He lived and worked in a world of rising atheism.  He says: God created every person and therefore no person is apart from God.  We are created for God, Augustine said, and when the relationship with the Lord is broken through sin, there is thus a vacuum, a question.  God himself does not let go of the people, and urges every person to give an answer.  The great world religions are answers to that question, Bavinck declares.

When we, in the good company of Augustine, Calvin, and Bavinck, move forward from the point of departure that we are created by God, it is not difficult to understand the impulse behind all the modern forms of religion.  The emptiness asks to be filled.  Man does not live by bread alone.

What is Believing?←⤒🔗

As Protestants, we say, with full conviction, that believing is very personal.  That is true, but you also must say something alongside this.  When the four companions of the lame young man bring their friend to Jesus, Jesus sees ‘their’ faith.  Believing is thus personal, but you do not believe for yourself alone.

Believing is – just look at Abraham, the ‘father of all believers’ – trusting God in His Word and going your way in obedience to him.  In the New Testament, it becomes completely clear that you then perceive that you can not trust in yourself for anything, but only in God who raises the dead.  That is totally bound up in Christ, who was crucified for our sins and was raised in order that we might live before God’s face.

Believing is thus very personal, but it changes your manner of life and thinking completely.  If sin is that you live in opposition to and in avoidance of God and determine for yourself what is good and evil, then believing is letting yourself be completely changed through a continuing renewal of your thinking.  What, up to this point, was your deepest orientation in life and death, namely that you belong to yourself, now changes to your confession that you belong to Christ - and that only now you are truly free.  You are, as a Christian - according to Luther - a very free person and subservient to no one.  Yes, and that freedom subsists in this, being a servant to all out of love.  That binds you to others.

What is Church?←⤒🔗

That brings us to the congregation.  In that love, I am bound to the people amidst whom I live.  But is that love for my neighbour the same as what binds us together in the church?  No, the church is another story.  Whoever reads the book of Acts, notices on practically every page that the mystery of the church is not seated with man, for example, in the love which they show to each other.  Instead, their bond is forged by the Holy Spirit; the Spirit of Christ is the secret of the church, and along with him, the Word of God, the gospel.  The Holy Spirit sends Philip to the high-ranking official from Ethiopia to help the man understand the Scriptures.  There the church is ‘founded.’  We read in various places that the Word ‘grew’, by which we mean that it continued to increase in power and meaning in the lives of people.  And when a group of students of John the Baptist in Ephesus are speaking with fervor among each other about the way of the Lord, but without knowing Jesus – then the Holy Spirit comes over them as Paul proclaims Christ Jesus.  Then the sluices are instantly opened and they are no longer like a pool of stagnant water, but they are standing in the living stream of the Holy Spirit.

When the Heidelberg Catechism explains the question regarding what we believe about the church, the answer does not begin with man, but with Christ, who through His Word and Spirit gathers, defends and preserves His church.  Those people do not have their mystery in themselves, but in God’s election.  They have been chosen to eternal life.

Therefore, the question regarding what the church is must not be answered by starting with what people do and how they organize their association with each others.  That organization includes what is necessary but it can and will change.  The Early Church looked different from the churches of medieval Europe, and the church of today looks quite different from the church of a century ago.  Societies and organizations were formed in the 19^th century.  Whether we have anything to do with church does not depend on such historical things.  Decisive is whether Christ through His Word and Spirit calls people out of the darkness of a life without him to the fellowship with him.

Christ’s church-gathering work obligates us to ensure that the Word is proclaimed and that people also receive explanations of that Word. Christ also commands that the sacraments function in the way that he intended - that baptism and the Lord’s Supper, instituted by Christ, point out to us our hopelessness without him and our salvation in him in order to strengthen our faith.  Finally, Christ gives us the responsibility to see that people are brought to Christ and are held in him.

Believing without a church?←⤒🔗

When the question is posed to us today whether you can be a believer without a church, it is of great importance to look at this in a good manner and react to it appropriately.  When we only defend a specific existing form of church, we are forgetting what it is actually about and we do not consider the question whether the Holy Spirit himself points out a new way for us today.  When we base our opinions on the Biblical witness, there is nothing that we need to ‘defend’, but we do have a clear insight into the mystery of the church.  She belongs to Christ, as the word ‘church’ witnesses.  Believing in Christ about living out of him and staying with him.  Therefore we can not believe in Christ without belonging to the church of Christ.