Congratulations, You Sat In A Pew
And Why That’s Better Than You Think
“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.”
Right. Clever. We’ve all heard it. It’s on T-shirts, Instagram captions, and probably some youth pastor’s forearm tattoo. And sure, technically, it’s true—proximity to the holy doesn’t equal participation in the holy. You can sit in a pew until you’re fossilized, and it won’t automatically regenerate your heart.
But here’s the thing: Church attendance is still one of the clearest evidences that you have been added to the family of God. “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). When God saves someone, He doesn’t save them into some floating disembodied spiritual experience—He plants them in the local church. Conversion isn’t just a private moment; it’s the moment you’re drafted into a people.
Church attendance and hunger for Scripture are arguably the two best outward signs that an inward renewal has actually occurred. God “sets the solitary in families” (Psalm 68:6), and newborns crave milk (1 Peter 2:2). The pure milk of the Word isn’t optional for new life—it’s instinctive. Babies cry for it. Likewise, when someone is truly born again, they fight against the cultural current and start showing up. Dead things float downstream; living things swim upstream—and nothing swims upstream like a Christian who decides to go to church every Sunday in 2025.
I get the heart behind the original quote. Pastors are frustrated. They see people plateauing: they show up but don’t give, they attend but don’t worship, they’re present but dead-eyed and untransformed. That’s a discipleship issue for sure. But the solution isn’t to downplay attendance—it’s to reframe it.
The following phrase is how I recommend this reframing in order to give prophetic eyes back to your people:
