We are not usually good team players. We put the “-ism” in individualism. We’re big on personal freedom and individual rights, personal investment strategies and personal preferences, personal development and self-reliance.

As a nation, our bumper-stickers say “Be all that you can be,” and “Look out for #1.” There have been days of cosmetic unity in our history, usually during the Olympics or when we’re in a clear war. Then we come together and raise our common flag. Then we’re glad to be identified by something bigger than our driver’s license or Facebook profile.

Even in the church we’re usually more mindful of the person sitting in our seat (me) than the rest of the pew. But one leg can’t hold up a table; one finger can’t claim to be the whole hand, let alone the entire body.

As Christians we are many individual members. Each believer is saved and sanctified, personally responsible for sin and for spiritual warfare. But each believer is also part of the church–the Body–and should not think of himself otherwise. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:12-13).

There are things that the church does that a Christian cannot do by himself. God’s point to the universe is “through the church” (Ephesians 3:10), through the collected mess we are. The heavenly beings don’t learn anything by watching how messy we are, they know that. They’re watching how collected we are.