Why go to church?

So this past year, I had a lot of good conversations with my close friend Joey about Church. At times Joey and I, both have laid our frustration about feeling numb when we go to church, but then we'd read something that restores passion. If church was like that....Both Joey and myself seemed to sense that life would be different a lot of times, church seems that activity that ones does. Church has lost a real significance in peoples lives. However, in our reading Joey and I get these glimpses that shows, what we both deeply believe. That church is where we go to meet with God and still has a significance for our lives. Maybe that is what keeps Joey and I going. Today I read another one of those glimpses. It is just a quote I read today, simply but I found it profound, a glimpse in the reason why church has meant so much to people in the past.
"If you can't go to church and, for at least a moment, be given transcendence; if you can't go to church and pass brief from this life into the next then I can't see why anyone should go. Just a brief moment of transcendence can cause you to come out of church a changed person. "

I think meeting with God is something that people long for. But it is interesting how people desire this meeting with the transcendence, but the place one meet that need is not in the church. A coworker of my said this week in the radio show that she runs at the university, that spirituality is an important element in her choosing songs, but not that she wants them to be religious. That comment is common in today's culture. How religious people are negative, but someone who is spiritual is to be revered. It sortof like a person saying I like Jesus, but not Christianity. Shane Claiborne, in his amazing book 'The Irresistible Revolution", describes this dilemma that he faced during his college days. That following Jesus sometime means giving up on what the church deems appropriate. I feel I identify with that statement, some of the view of the church come in contradictions with Jesus.

These contradictions have drawn me to the 'emergent movement'. In this past two years, the emergent movement has been a refuge of mine. Giving me hope in the midst of despair knowing that I will never leave the church, but at times wondering how much longer I can stay. This past year, authors in the friendship of the emergent movement have shown me why I still go to church, and why I believe the church is still powerful. The have given me hope, a hope that I cling onto with all my might, knowing that it is not I that keeps me there, rather God whose grip is firm on my life. While I don't know where the emergent movement will lead me, in reading Doug Pagitt 're-imagined church' this question no longer needs to be answered. We could live comfortably in the way things are or move towards God, and risk criticism, but be more faithful to our understanding of the role of the Church in our lives.