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I (we) believe in the holy "catholic" church, the "communion" of saints…
The faith we profess in the Triune God is never expressed in isolation. We don't contemplate or
practice our faith behind closed doors. The Christian faith, as described in the Bible, is a communal faith. It's about struggling together to both understand and practice our faith.
Our understanding of God's Word is guided by the community of faith, and likewise, our service to God is also affirmed by the faith community. Without a meaningful connection to the faith community, as the history of Christianity amply demonstrates, we become prone to apostasy. Our private understanding of God's Word needs to be both confirmed and challenged by the communal wisdom of the church.
In the same vein, when we speak of "the church," the church is not isolated to our local church. We belong, instead, as we confess each Sunday through the Apostles' Creed, to the holy "catholic" (universal) church; namely, all the churches of the past, present and future.
What is the practical implication of this?
The understanding of "our mission" must be enlarged to include, or should be placed within, the larger mission of the church universal. In order to do this it is important that we make conscious efforts to be in "communion," not only with "our church members," but also with all the saints of the past, present and future (our children).
It helps us to know how, as a faith community, they had sought to boldly and faithfully express their faith amid difficult challenges. The church is not a perfect institution, as Calvin purports through his distinction of the "invisible" and "visible" church. This, however, does not warrant the diehard claim that the church is irrelevant to one's faith development and practice. To borrow Calvin's expressions, the "unholy separation" between the church and the individual due to the perception that the church is useless would be tantamount to "pestilent errors" and "foulest delusions" (Institutes 4.1.5).
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