Age has nothing to do with not wanting to attend church. Go to any region of the United States and one answer is prevalent regardless of age, sex or racial background. “I just don’t think about it.” People who have never attended or haven’t attended in a long time do not think about church and most seldom give thought to God.

Sunday is for sports, for recreation for shopping or for about anything but worship. Sure you run across the guy who says, “I see God every Sunday in nature.” That guy is either fishing, hunting or playing golf. Fact is, that same guy may see the beauty of nature but doesn’t worship. He will also tell you in a New York minute, “I don’t need to go to church!”

So, why does anybody need to go to church? If you believe in God that’s enough, right? The answer is no. Almost every person you encounter in life will believe in God at some time in their life. There are atheists who do not believe but at some point most all of them have believed. Believing in God is one thing but accepting God is another thing.

You can believe in reincarnation but that belief doesn’t make it real. You can believe you will never die but that belief will not stop death from claiming your body. Belief in itself is not enough, never has been and never will be. So what makes believing in God and accepting God different?

When a person believes God exists and accepts His existence it changes how that person lives. Instead of playing a round of golf and enjoying the beauty of what God has created, the golfer gives thanks to God for what has been created. The belief and acceptance is translated in an action.

No one can prove to you that God exists. One of the attributes of God that is most often overlooked and often discounted about God is that He is not logical. He does not fit neatly into any package man can create or theorize. It is not logical for a bumblebee to fly but God created it to fly. It is not logical that God should allow the most holy of us to suffer for years and years but we see it al the time.

Logic can never prove God. The only way to know God is first to believe He is who He said He is and to accept Him. This amounts to faith. Believing and trusting in Him that is not seen or heard or comprehended through the senses. It is only after a person says, “I believe and accept God” that God fully reveals Himself to the person.

The Holy Spirit of God is at work at all times in the lives of people; trying to get them to not just believe but to accept. That Holy Spirit is more than conscious, more than coincidence and more than a still small voice only we can hear. It is the power of God calling us to accept and thus to worship.

Worship is acceptance in action. And, yes you can worship in your boat out on the lake or on the tenth green after missing a two-footer. But it isn’t enough; it isn’t what God calls you to do.

A person can play baseball alone. Tossing the ball up, hitting it and running to get it isn’t baseball. Tackling imaginary players isn’t football. For team sports you need a team to interact with and to work with. Is one finger a hand? No, four fingers and a thumb joined by the wrist to the arm is a hand. A believer without other believers is just a believer just as a baseball player without a team is just a person.

Worship is the interaction of believers with other believers. We not only believe but we act on that belief by professing that belief to others by involving ourselves in corporate worship.

So why go to church? Because we believe and we accept God is who He said He is we proclaim that belief by worshiping with other believers. To say I don’t need church is like the baseball player saying he doesn’t need a team.

For a person to say “I don’t want to go to church” is like saying “I believe in God but I don’t need Him in my life.”