From my reading today, an outstanding statement on the neccessity of the church as that which makes it possible to BE Christian; more accurately put, one can only BE Christian as a member of a body.

what was original about the first Christians was not the peculiarity of their beliefs, even beliefs about Jesus, but their social inventiveness in creating a community whose like had not been seen before. To say they believed in God is true but uninteresting. What is interesting is that they thought that their belief in God as they had encountered him in Jesus required the formation of a community distinct from the world exactly because of the kind of God he was.
—-Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society, p.42