With March madness in full swing, I’ve had basketball on the brain. But with me being me, I’ve come up with a comparison between basketball and the Christian life.

Basketball requires knowledge, practice and a team, and so does the Christian life. You see, while you can know a lot about the game and practice aspects of the game, you can’t play basketball unless you are part of a basketball team. In the same way, you can (and should) know a lot about the Christian faith and practice aspects of the Christian faith—like Bible reading, prayer and so on—but you aren’t living the full Christian life unless you are part of a church.

This is both common sense and consistent with the teaching of Scripture. You see, the Bible (Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12) talks about the Church as the “Body of Christ” and just as in a physical body individual parts don’t survive apart from the whole body, so, too, individual Christians can’t survive, let alone function, apart from their connection to the Church.

So with all this in mind, let me urge you to connect with the Church this weekend and fully live out the Christian life Christ died to give you.