By “Going to church is your testimony” was the reply once given to a Christian who said that he missed church at times because of evangelistic dinners on Sunday night with a neighbour. That is very insightful.
Scripture is clear that we need to reach the unsaved world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But that is not, as the Christian in the above story implied, in conflict with your own worship of God and fellowship with believers. In fact, when reading in the New Testament about a believer’s witness to the world, it is not unusual to read about the rather obvious prerequisite of Church for yourself.
In John 13:35 Jesus already prepared the Apostles for their rather famous witness to the world by reminding them that it will indeed be their extraordinary love for fellow believers that will increase their witness to the world. Indeed, “going to Church is your testimony”!
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
John 13:35
Throughout the book of Acts, the book about being a witness of the Lord Jesus to the furthest reaches of the world, it is the formation and strengthening of churches that is the means by which God’s Word spreads so quickly and so far.
Throughout the New Testament, in all the letters to the churches, it is the high view of God for the purpose of true worship and the work of the saints among one another that receives the most attention, for if, as Jesus already told the disciples, the love for one another is excelling, then the witness to the world is inevitable.
We should never, like the Christian in the story above, use evangelism as an excuse against Church, but should, instead, use Church as an excuse for the world to see that we love Christ and one another more, and then, after Church, explain to them why we love Christ and others more.
We witness best when we demonstrate our loyalty to Christ and His Church.