Listen to John Piper:

For most Christians corporate church life is a Sunday morning worship service and that’s all. A smaller percentage adds to that a class of some kind, perhaps Sunday morning or Wednesday evening in which there is very little interpersonal ministry. Now don’t misunderstand me, I believe in the tremendous value of corporate worship and I believe that solid teaching times are usually crucial for depth and strength. But you simply can’t read the New Testament in search of what church life is supposed to be like and come away thinking that worship services and classes are the sum total of what church was supposed to be.

The inevitable effect of treating church as worship services and classes is to make the people of God passive and too dependent on ordained experts. And could it not be that this pervasive relational passivity and dependence of millions of Christians—I mean passivity in interpersonal, spiritual ministry—rob us of some of Christ’s precious remedies for a hundred problems?

If God designed the church to function like a body with every member ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit to other members, in regular interpersonal relationship, then would it be surprising to find that the neglect of this regular interpersonal, spiritual ministry cripples the body in some of its functions and causes parts of the body to be weak and sick? Isn’t that what you would expect?

~ John Piper in his sermon How Christ Enables the Church to Upbuild Itself in Love, September 17, 1995