I enjoy traveling. I love to see new things, explore new places, and have new experiences. When we travel, we stay in a hotel, and aside from sleeping in a strange bed, I generally enjoy hotels. Staying in a hotel is very different from living in your home!

For one thing, you know you’re just visiting when you’re at the hotel. It’s not your long-term residence. There’s no commitment on your end to be there. The other people in the hotel are simply other guests who are visiting the same weekend as you. You don’t know them, and you don’t have to get to know them. Likewise, the hotel staff are just that—employees hired to provide you a service.

That’s another great thing about hotels, the services. You don’t cook your own meals in your hotel room (well, not in most hotels). You eat out or have food delivered. You don’t wash your towels. You leave them on the floor in the bathroom (try doing that at home!) and the staff pick them up and leave clean towels for you on the rack. You don’t make your bed or take out the trash or vacuum the floors or clean the toilet or even restock the toilet paper! You go to the pool when you want to, the workout room if you want to look committed to being fit, and the free breakfast—where you don’t care who sees you in your PJs.

Your home, on the other hand, is a different story. It’s your long-term residence and your responsibility. If you don’t wash the dishes, they don’t get washed. If you don’t do your laundry, it doesn’t get done. If you don’t clean the bathroom, it gets dirtier and nastier each day. Depending on what type of home you have, you may have to mow the grass, water the flowers, and shovel the snow. For those who share their home, the other people living there aren’t merely temporary guests or staff hired to wait on you hand and foot. They are family or friends. This is their home, too, and all of you are responsible for taking care of the chores.

Now, let’s apply this analogy to the church. Is your church your home or a hotel? Do you see yourself as a guest or a customer or a consumer, here temporarily to receive a spiritual service provided by paid staff? Are the other people in the church guests who just happen to be in the same hotel on the same weekend? There’s no motivation to actually know them or be involved in their lives, no more than going beyond elevator small talk.

Sadly, many Christians approach their church like a hotel. They come and stay when it’s convenient, when they’re not too busy with other pressing matters. When they’re there, they consume the resources and services provided. Sure, they support the church with a little money every now and again—they’re not freeloaders, after all! But there’s no commitment. There’s no sharing the chores. There’s no need to get to know the other guests—do we really dive deep relationally with the loud family staying in room 223 across the hall? How important is it to build a relationship with the older couple sitting three rows behind me?

Treating the church like a hotel just doesn’t work. Not only does it stunt your spiritual growth, but it hinders others’ ability to follow Jesus, too. God didn’t design the church to be a full-service provider, five-star spiritual hotel that would pamper spiritual consumers on their spiritual vacations. He designed the church to be a home, a household, a spiritual family. The other people in the church aren’t just guests, they’re brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.

Like a home, everyone in the family is responsible for the wellbeing of the household. Everyone should pitch in and lend a helping hand, and everyone has a contribution to make to the family. But more than our money or our talents, what the church really needs is our hearts. You might feel like you don’t have much money to spare or any marketable talents to offer (although you’d be wrong), but you do have something only you can bring to the table: you.

I have a large family—four boys and a girl on the way. Yes, I have four boys. But my family would be incomplete if one of them were missing. Oh, I’d still have three boys—more than most—but I wouldn’t have my family. Each of my sons is different and unique, and I love them all individually. They each are an important and indispensable part of our family. Yes, the grass would still get mowed, and the flowers would still get watered, and the strawberries would still get picked with only three boys. But we’d still miss the fourth. Our family just wouldn’t be the same without him. I wouldn’t be who I am without my relationships with each person in my family. They are part of my identity, and who I am has been permanently shaped by who they are.

If you weren’t in church for a few weeks, a similar dynamic would unfold. Yes, the songs would get sung, the sermon would be preached, the coffee would be made. But you would be missing. Whether you feel like you even make a difference, the reality is our spiritual family is just not the same without you. The people around you are who they are in part because of who you are and who we are together.

The church is only the church when it’s not just a hotel, but a spiritual home. And we’ll never have a vibrant and growing walk with Christ unless we move beyond guests to become family.