Practice
Do I need the church to be a Christian?
Is faith a private matter, or do other people necessarily belong to it?
Being a Christian is not a club membership. You do not become a Christian by joining a church, attending a course or getting a membership card. Being a Christian is a relationship, with Jesus, personally.
But whoever follows that relationship ends up in community anyway. Not because they have to, but because they want to. Faith without other Christians is like a fire made of a single log, it goes out quickly.
So the question is not “do I have to go to church?”, but: where do I find people I can believe alongside? That may be a large congregation, a small house group or two friends at the kitchen table. The form is secondary, the community is not.