We are a culture of externalities. Church 3 times a week, maximum involvement in “church ministries”, making sure you tithe every week, and taking the Lord’s supper. All of these are good things and great pillars of the modern church. However, they only provide for us an outward experience or expression of our faith, and if not careful turn very quickly into a weekly checklist. This stifles our need to rely on inward transformation and only provides an excuse for external symbolism we in the church have become so familiar with. It all quickly becomes just another experience. More noise.
Moreover, the excuse/externality of choice for me and many others in the
church has ironically been...the church. Where I came face to face with this recently was while my wife and I were visiting her hometown congregation in Seminole, OK. Like most small town churches, the church meets 3 times a week. It was Sunday night around 5:30 (church is at 6) and my father-in-law asks us the question. “You guys goin’ to church tonight?” Grateful that he gave us a choice, Courtney smiled at him politely and declined. To which he quipped, “Well, you must not love God.” We all had a good laugh at a moderately to extremely corny joke. However, while the laughter was dying down, Courtney responded with a comment that we have been mindful of ever since. “No Dad, I love God...but church is not my god.” Don’t make an experience your god. Don’t make doctrine your god. Don’t make the church building, which has no significant meaning, your god. All external, all pointless. Especially when in pursuit of a personal God who doesn’t look at appearances, but only at the heart. 
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