Hebrews 11:1-11 The Discipline of Discipleship

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Our desire is to help you draw near to God by growing in faith, community, and service. Well, hello everyone. My name is Kyle Douglas and I'm Executive Pastor here at Recast Church.

This is actually a re-preaching of the sermon. We had some audio difficulties, some technical difficulties this week with the sermon. So this is service number three, I guess you could say, for the sake of getting the sermon up on the website.

The Gift of Incarnation and the Call to Follow Jesus

Thank you for joining us. So, what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ? If you remember last week, we talked about the grace of God who sent Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus came and took on flesh, put on a human suit, if you will, and that's what we call the gift of incarnation.

He came to be our Savior, which He accomplished on the cross. And also to model for us what it means to be righteous dudes and chicks, right? And He commands us to follow Him or be His disciple. And when we are obedient, look out.

We are in for a wild ride of transformation because Jesus will move us from where we are currently, forgiven, yes, justified, yes, on our way to heaven, yes, but still gunked up with wrong beliefs and bad habits and selfishness and sin.

He wants to move us from that place to a person that more and more reflects the image of our Creator. And so the gift of incarnation is also a gift to each of us personally, as God, by His Holy Spirit, produces Christ in us.

And remember that Emmanuel doesn't just mean that God is with us in proximity, but that He's mighty to save, that He's capable of the victory, and with Him we can win the battle over sin and death, both in the next life and in this one.

So when the going gets tough and the chips are down, like with King Ahaz, remember, we cling to our Savior in faith, we walk in obedience, and we watch God do His transformative, redemptive work. How serious is our Father in heaven about holiness?

How badly does He want you to be transformed into the likeness of His Son? The answer is a lot. He loves us. He wants what's best for us. And apparently, learning to be perfect in love and kindness and faithfulness and having rest and strong relationships and trust and peace and being in perfect familial harmony with our Creator and brothers and sisters in Christ is the best.

So anything in our minds, hearts, or actions contrary to that best needs to be methodically purged from the system. So this morning we want to continue in this theme of the gift of the incarnation and ask what is the process by which the life of Christ gets produced in our flesh and sin removed as we follow Jesus as a disciple.

How is God going to make me like His Son is the main question there. I think the Scripture's answer to that is discipline. So this morning we're talking about the discipline of discipleship. It's no accident that we take our English word disciple from the same root as discipline.

The word discipline means to teach or correct, sometimes taking on the idea of removal or punishment. So a disciple is one who is being disciplined or taught or corrected in a certain way of life. But as you know, this word has a wide variety of connotations and some of those we don't like so much.

We can talk about discipline as a person's self-control or focus, as in athletes and soldiers have discipline, but we can also hear in it punishment or chastisement. We ground our kids or an employee can undergo disciplinary action, which is all rather unpleasant.

And I think there's one version that has grown increasingly unpopular and that's church discipline. So how does God employ discipline in our lives? Is it good or bad? Is it something we should enjoy or seek to avoid?

I hope that some of those questions will be answered this morning. So turn with me to Hebrews 12, 1 through 11. In the book of Hebrews, the author, commonly believed to be Paul, is writing to fellow Jews turned Christian brothers, in part to explain to them the superiority of Christianity over Judaism, that Christ is not just a law abider, but the fulfillment of the law, and over the law, and the perfect perfecter of God's people.

And that's why we don't kill goats and cows anymore, sacrifices for sin, because Christ's blood is the final complete sacrifice. And how many of you are happy that we don't do that anymore? I've spent a lot of time in Uganda with my job as Executive Director of Orphan Justice Mission, and at one point I got to actually see a goat being slaughtered that we were going to eat.

They went out back and said, do you want to see how we cook our food? And I said sure, and it was one of the most disturbing things I've ever witnessed. So I am thankful that we don't have to come and bring sacrifices.

It really is a messy, difficult, bloody kind of an act. But Christ's blood was that final sacrifice, so we don't go back to sheep and goats anymore, and that's part of what the writer of Hebrews is trying to say.

What the law couldn't accomplish in making us holy, he can. But these Hebrew Christians were also a persecuted people, who were experiencing most likely the pressure from their fellow Jews to give up on all this Jesus stuff and get back to their roots.

And in the midst of all of this difficulty, they, like most of us I would think, were probably questioning their faith. Where is God? Why would he let these things happen? What have I done wrong to deserve this?

So listen to what our writer speaks into that situation from Hebrews 12, 1 -11. Let's read. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom the Father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

I thank you again for another beautiful morning and just a bright Christmas. God, that reminds us of your beautiful power, your creative power. I just thank you for the opportunity to come and gather again as a body of believers here today.

Father, I thank you for this chapter in Hebrews, for this word that you inspired Paul to write. God, that you would encourage us to take seriously your discipline, but to not see it just as punishment or your judgment, God, but something that is to refine us.

God, I thank you that you care for us enough that you would make us into your image, that you would treat us like sons and daughters. And so God, I just pray that as we continue on this morning to worship and to read your word, Lord, that you would continue to teach us, open our ears and our eyes to what you have for us in your word, God.

Teach us what it means to be a disciplined disciple. And it's in the name of Christ that we pray. Amen. So, I want to talk about some hard things this morning, things that will likely stretch your understanding of God and of the church.

So, it's really important that we lay the right foundation for what we're about to discuss. Our Hebrew passage here reminds us of some essentials. First, God is a father. That's how he wants to be known.

And as the good father, he loves us and wants what is best for us, always, all the time, in every moment. As the father of three girls, I understand this myself in an imperfect way, no doubt, but I want what's best for my kids.

I'm generally a pretty rational guy. I think, in general, I spend more time in my head than in my heart, which I actually got in trouble for when I went through the journey seminar recently. I was encouraged to be a little bit more in touch with my feelings.

But, in general, I need reasons for stuff I do. But when it comes to my kids, I can't explain it fully, but I just want them to be happy. It's a heart thing. I want good for them. I don't want them to hurt.

I love buying stuff for them. I love buying stuff for me, too. But I love to make them laugh. And when I see them do wrong or they're mean, in the same way, my heart freaks out before my head because I can sense the harm in it.

That whatever behavior they are manifesting is not good for them. And so I introduce correction into their life, sometimes painfully so, because I don't want something harmful to get lodged in their hearts or their brains.

I love them. And I want them to be good. And so I discipline them. We are disciplined because we are loved by God. He doesn't want us to be in pain or suffer under the rotting disease of sin. So He trains us, corrects, sometimes punishes us, so that we would learn the good, learn to be holy.

This is very helpful, I think, in coloring our definition of love, isn't it? Whatever your definition used to be, it gets to be remade in this mold, where a sovereign Father God, who loves you in an immense and self-sacrificial way, introduces things pleasant and painful to your life in order to make you better, that we may share in His holiness, the writer of Hebrews says, and to produce in us the fruit of righteousness.

And so this is the truth that must be carried through every level of discipline we are going to touch on this morning. Love. Love is God's motivation for discipline. It's the church's motivation for discipline.

It should even be our personal motivation for being a disciplined follower of Jesus. Francis Chan and Mark Boving said it well in their book, Multiply, which is a book about becoming a disciple, a fantastic read if you ever need a good discipleship resource.

They say this, If you're not willing to make loving God and loving people your highest priority, then stop. Seriously, walk away until you've settled this one essential point. Lack of love is the unmistakable mark of death.

And then they quote 1 John 3 .14, We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. The purpose of discipline is to make us more like Christ, and the motivation for discipline is love.

Have we got it?

Alright.

Personal Discipline and the Spiritual Disciplines

So as I've read the scriptures, I see a theme of discipline flowing throughout, and I think we can categorize it into three parts. Category 1, personal discipline. Category 2, church discipline. And then Category 3, everything else discipline.

Each of these are tools in the hand of God to help make you holy, but they are unique categories or levels, so to speak. And each of them is an immense topic that we could spend a whole lot of time discussing each, but this morning I'm going to focus on personal discipline and church discipline, since this series is focusing on how the Incarnation affects the followership culture of Recast as a local church.

But I will wrap up with a couple brief comments about the everything else discipline. So Level 1, personal discipline. Discipline is on the scene any time that we are tempted to leave God's way for any other way.

Part of the work of the Christian is to daily surrender oneself to the teaching of Jesus, to be open to His gentle correction and rebuke. Proverbs 3, 5 -8 says this, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths. Do you acknowledge God in all of your ways? This is the personal side of discipline. God is working inside you and has provided His word to guide and direct you, but you also strive to put your life in order and keep in step with Jesus.

We discipline ourselves to be more like Jesus and our motivation is love. So we have this duty to daily follow Jesus Christ and there are practices that we take on to do so and these are called the spiritual disciplines.

Now I do want to be careful about just throwing some more stuff out for us to do because the discipline of discipleship at the personal level is much more than just making and completing some religious checklist.

It's really about our heart. It's about surrendering ourselves to the loving care of our Father and joining Him in reshaping us. But the reality is we are physical creatures whose hearts are tied to our hands.

And I think to make that point we could say it like this, our spiritual disciplines are for the purpose of enslaving ourselves or enslaving our flesh. Think of the Israelites coming out of Egypt. 400 years that people toiled and slaved under the oppressive hand of a pagan nation.

The work they did with their hands affected their hearts. Their environment affected their hearts. The culture of pagan Egypt and of slavery saturated the Hebrews all but erasing I think the values of Father Abraham except for the fact that they still knew how to call out to him.

And God walked them around the wilderness for 40 years to train them in a new way of life. So Deuteronomy 8, 3 through 5, Moses talking as the Israelites are preparing to move into the promised land after this 40 years.

He says this,.

And He humbled you, speaking to the Israelites, and let you hunger and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone.

But man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these 40 years. Know then in your heart, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.

So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in His ways and fearing Him. When we are rescued from slavery to sin through Christ, God needs to walk the Egypt out of us. And the spiritual disciplines help that happen.

Getting serious about personal spiritual discipline may not sound that great to you. You may not see a need to read or memorize more of the Bible or improve your prayer life or find out what it means to worship outside of Sunday morning.

Or maybe you've tried some of those things for a while in the past and it just seemed awkward or stifling. God's not into rules anymore anyway, right? I would encourage you to not give up on the spiritual disciplines.

Because I think what we often fail to realize is that discipline leads to freedom. It's like learning how to play the piano, right? At first you follow some pretty dogmatic rules. It's boring, it's hard, it's stiff.

But if you stick with it, you can get to a place where your skills turn into musical freedom and you can create and enjoy music. My 16 year old niece, Olivia, is a pianist. Though obviously gifted, she has disciplined herself and learned the principles of her instrument.

Multiple instruments actually, but especially the piano. She's trained her fingers and ears to know music. And she's working on the CD right now. And what's amazing is that she hasn't written down a single note.

All of the songs are in her head, the 12 or 14 or 16 songs, whatever it is. And so the other week we were gathered for a family gathering around the holidays. And we're kind of sitting around and we have a piano in my in-laws living room.

And we're like, Olivia, play us something from your CD. And she kind of hemmed and hawed like a bashful teenager. And then she finally just sat down. And she just starts to play. And this beautiful, gorgeous music just fills the room.

And it was like George Winston was in her living room. I mean, she's that good, that talented. And in fact, I want to play a brief clip for you right now of this CD. If you could turn that on. Isn't that beautiful?

See, God wants you to learn to play the music of the Spirit. Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, 6 -10, Train yourself for godliness. The word he uses for train is gymnazo, where we get the word gymnasium from.

Why did he use that word? He's basically saying, hey, hit the gym. Stay spiritually fit. In our Hebrews passage, Paul says we are to run with endurance. And struggle. And consider. What's he mean? He means don't be lazy.

Don't give up. Keep thinking the right thoughts. Get rid of sin. Stay focused.

Work hard.

In a nutshell, be disciplined about your faith. So the exercises we do to stay focused and keep running are these spiritual disciplines. Things like prayer, and studying God's Word, and spending alone time so you can think, or worshipping, or journaling, whatever.

If our heart's desire is to draw near to God, these are the things we do to sharpen ourselves, and should in some way be a part of our normal schedule. Stephen Covey, the personal management guru, calls it sharpening the saw.

And through these godly personal habits, we get ready to get out into the world and love people. So how disciplined are you at the personal level? How hard are you working to know God, and do the daily and weekly things that are going to keep you strong and fresh, so you can get out into the world and tear it up for Jesus?

Maybe there's a couple New Year's resolutions floating around in there somewhere. And that leads us to the second category of discipline, I think. Church discipline. But don't forget, the purpose of discipline is to make us more like Christ, and the motivation for discipline is love.

Church Discipline, Accountability, and Membership

So level two, church discipline. Your personal discipline has a purpose, so that you can be a contributing member of God's team. It's like a football player who works out, watches film, and studies his playbook, right?

Those are all really good things to do. They can even be enjoyable as activities in themselves. But that personal work is meant to make you better when you step on the field. Film is wasted if you don't get out with your teammates and practice, and start rehearsing the game plan and testing each other's skills, and even more wasted if you didn't show up for game time.

In a team sport, you can only develop yourself as a player so far, and you're certainly not going to win a game all by yourself. Christianity is a team sport. When I was playing football for Schoolcraft when I was in high school, there was this kid named Joe Miedema.

Joe was a wrestler, and he was built like an S -10 truck. It was like you run into that guy, and your head throbbed for days. It would seem like every time we'd be in a tackling drill or something, we'd line up, and I would go against Joe.

I'd walk up to the line, and I'd be like, oh man, not again. Of course, we'd go, and we'd just collide into each other. Man, it hurt to hit Joe. But Joe made me a tougher football player. I knew if I could hit Joe, I could hit anybody the other team threw at me.

From Chan and Boving again. They say while every individual needs to obey Jesus' call to follow, we cannot follow Jesus' individuals. The proper context for every disciple-maker is the church. It is impossible to make disciples aside from the church of Jesus Christ.

It's impossible to one another yourself. As disciple-makers, we will join together with other believers, help them overcome the sin that holds them back, and challenge them to grow into more effective disciple-makers.

If you are not connected with other Christians, serving and being served, challenging and being challenged, then you are not living as he desires, and the church is not functioning as he intended. Just like Joe made me a better football player.

Your brothers and sisters who are sitting right here next to you this morning are there to make you a better Christian. We need each other to become more like Christ. We can't do it alone. And the church plays two important disciplinary roles.

One positive in terms of training and accountability, and one negative in terms of introducing consequences in order to prevent sin from taking root in the lives of individuals and in the body at large.

So let's look first at the positive side. This side is about people joining together to pursue a common mission and support each other in personal transformation. This is why you show up on Sunday morning.

To hear the Word of God. To learn it and understand it better. And that's why you have Bible studies and accountability groups so that you can learn from and encourage each other. This is why I meet for breakfast every Thursday morning with an accountability partner who is here this morning.

What's up Steve?

And why I talk every other week with one of my close pastor friends and why I meet with Don every Thursday and the elders on Tuesday. To hang out, yeah. Talk business, yeah. Have fun, yeah. But in large part for accountability.

All of those people I just mentioned help sharpen me. They ask me direct questions. Have you spent time in the Word this week? Have you treated your wife and your kids? Looked at anything you shouldn't have?

Any temptations we can pray for you about? It's in these intentional relationships that I'm supported and I feel the helpful pressure to do right. To not be careless and mess up. Seems like every month we get word of another pastor who's fallen into some kind of indiscretion.

And I can tell you that myself and the elders, we don't want to be there. And we know that it's going to take us as a community to keep us all strong. I'm so grateful for these guys who are around me because they help discipline me in love so that I can become what I know I want to become, a more Jesus-like person.

Do you have this kind of community around you? If you're wondering if you do, I think this is probably the best test there is. When was the last time you confessed a sin in your life to someone in this church?

Or at least to a close brother or sister? And I'm not talking about the wimpy stuff. I'm not talking about, I took extra napkins from McDonald's this week and I put them in my glove box. Not that kind of stuff.

I'm talking about the nitty-gritty, right? The real stuff. The fresh stuff. The stuff that is embarrassing to you. That's a prime indicator of the depth of your relationships. I love how Proverbs 27 .17 says, As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

So what's the negative side, or the more punitive side of church discipline? Well, the church as an organized institution is also called to formally introduce corrective action when sin is not confronted at the personal or relational level.

So if someone is continually and boldly doing something contrary to the teachings of Jesus and isn't showing any willingness to listen or grow, then the church leadership may have to get involved in order to use what power they may have in that Christian's life to call him or her to repentance in what?

Love for his or her own good, but also for the good of the church as a whole. And this is what we see in the process of Matthew 18. Sin is contagious, and the leadership of the church is called to quarantine destructive doctrines and behaviors.

A scriptural example of this is given in 1 Corinthians 5, if you're familiar with that passage, where Paul says that the man who is sleeping with his mother ought to be removed, delivered over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit might be saved.

Chapter 5, verse 5. And then later, purge the evil person from among you, verse 13. And now we start to shift a little bit in our seats, don't we? This side of discipline doesn't sound like much fun. Is this really what the church is called to do?

Isn't that judgy? Sounds kind of like a middle-aged type of thing, right? Bloodletting and excommunication.

Huzzah!

I did. I did just say huzzah. I thought the church was supposed to be really nice and stuff. Kicking someone out doesn't sound nice. And another person might say, and that's why I don't go to church, become a member, etc., etc.

Are you saying, Kyle, that recasts might find reason to remove someone's membership or break fellowship with them? Does this seem harsh? Does this seem contrary to what the church is all about? I thought the church was full of grace, and aren't we all sinners?

What gives you elders the right to kick someone out? Well, let's go back to the end goal of our followership. Our purpose is to become like Jesus Christ in every way. And there isn't really any purpose to your life greater than that.

And it is a matter of life and death, and allowing sin, worse, endorsing sin by not confronting it, is in itself a terrible evil. Listen to what A .B. Bruce had to say about church discipline. He's an old schooler, so some of the language might be a little bit stilted, but a really powerful passage.

He says,.

Such rigor, meaning such excessive steps to take discipline, pitiless in appearance, is really merciful to all parties. It is merciful to the faithful members of the church because it removes from their midst a mortifying limb whose presence imperils the life of the whole body.

Scandalous open sin cannot be tolerated in any society without general demoralization ensuing, least of all in the church, which is a society whose very reason for being is the culture of Christian virtue.

But the apparently pitiless rigor is mercy even towards the unfaithful who are subjects thereof, For to keep scandalous offenders inside the communion of the church is to do your best to damn their souls and to exclude them ultimately from heaven.

On the other hand, to deliver them over to Satan may be, and it is hoped will be, but giving them a foretaste of hell now that they may be saved from hellfire forever. It was in this hope that Paul insisted on the excommunication of the incestuous person from the Corinthian church, that by the castigation of his fleshly sin his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

We don't have a problem with cutting out, removing, disciplining cancer, do we? We want to catch it when it's small. We rejoice when we catch a tumor early. Ray Zetek, and many of you know Ray, he plays in the band here, I was talking with him the other day and he shared a story with me about two of his bouts with cancer.

The first was when he got cancer on his lip. His doctor said, I think we can take care of this, and he numbed it and cut it out right then and there. Now Ray was a tuba player and he thought, well, there goes my career.

Some of us fear that discipline will destroy us, that we won't recover. But Ray's lip healed and he could play again. Now what would have happened if the doctor had let it go longer? The remedy would have been more drastic and he may have lost his chops, as he said.

The second bout was with a small tumor on his neck, it was a small node, and the doctor did a biopsy and at first he was told it was benign. But then two weeks later was brought in by a phone call saying the doctor needed to see him immediately.

Don't you hate those phone calls? So Ray came into the Spartan waiting room with just a couple of chairs and a stool and the doctor's computer, and the doctor said, you know why you're here, right? Ray said, no.

Well, we sent your sample on to the specialist in Detroit and you have cancer, and it should have come out yesterday. Unfortunately, I can't get you an appointment for four months. Thankfully, he was put on a priority list and had surgery in a month and a half.

Thank the Lord. But already by that time, that little small node of a tumor had grown to a golf ball-sized tumor, and the result of the surgery that was needed in order to remove the whole thing was that he lost feeling in the left side of his face.

Our sin is a cancer that leads to death, and it greatly behooves us to remove it quickly. James 5, 19, and 20 says, My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

The purpose of discipline is to cut out sin, and the motivation for discipline is love. This kind of love is the foundation for church membership. This is why we want to encourage everyone who is serious about following Jesus to make a public declaration of your intention by being an active participant in the Fellowship of Recast.

Church membership isn't about getting a right to vote on some stuff the church does, though that's a part of it from time to time. It's really about committing yourself to a specific group of people to do life together with them and to place yourself formally within their care.

I have to admit, I have not always been a strong proponent of church membership. I've seen it used poorly. I've seen it be a platform for which elder boards can bug you to increase your giving. I've seen it used as some kind of inner circle thing, like getting a members-only jacket.

I've seen it become a meaningless bureaucratic relic due to churches putting people on the rolls but being afraid to take anybody off so the church membership outnumbers the people sitting in the chairs.

And frankly, I've worried that it's confusing to people. What happened when I believed in my heart and confessed with my mouth that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior? I became a part of the family of God, didn't I?

I'm now in church big C, right? So what's this additional step of becoming a member of your little C church? If my membership is removed, did I just lose my salvation? These are legitimate issues and reasonable concerns, I think.

But let me just please take a moment to state the heart of Don and I as pastors and all of us as elders that when we use church discipline, it is a tool that we would use in love. And we would never come at you from a place of judgment or of superiority as if we just somehow want to wield arbitrary authority over you.

No.

We come to you as fellow sinners. And if you wanted to look at our rap sheets as elders, we've got quite a list, right guys? No, if we use discipline, we're coming at you to put an arm around you and walk side by side, fellow sinners to the foot of the cross, both in need of God's grace, both in need of His forgiveness.

We love you guys. We love this church. And we want to see every single person here become a fully devoted follower of Christ. We want you to experience life to the full. We want you to be all in in Jesus.

And it's possible that discipline might be there. And let me say too that we as elders are under discipline all the time with each other and with you as a church. So it's something that we do together.

So what is our purpose in membership? Why does Recast have a process where you can become a member? We see it as a tool to help make a spiritual reality tangible to you and to facilitate the accomplishment of our shared mission.

Do I need my name on some piece of paper to treat you as a brother or sister in Christ if I know you love Jesus?

No.

Nope. We are family. I am a brother to the Christ follower sitting in these seats just as much as a Christ follower that goes to Madawan Community Church or goes to Morris Hill Bible Church, Grand Rapids, or Seattle, or who worships at Glory of Christ in Gwinero, Uganda.

And we do well to love and support anyone we interact with from the family of God. But from a practical perspective, you live and work with a particular group of people. And it's God's design that you join up with a local congregation where you can love and serve others in intentional relationships, where other people can get to know you well enough to know you, warts and all, where you can invest in others and help them become more like Jesus.

If my great friend and brother in Christ, Paul Sirwaji, who is in Uganda, is my main source of fellowship and spiritual accountability, then I'm missing something. Paul and I can encourage one another, we can pray for one another, we can even talk on a fairly regular basis, but it doesn't replace the regular face-to-face contact that should be a part of being involved in a local church.

What other benefits are there to joining a local church? I think it helps you clarify what you believe, you ascribe to a particular set of doctrines, it provides a natural support system for you, we're going to take care of you.