Long-time Baptist blogger Centuri0n has written a post about the importance of the local church.
Regardless of whether you agree with everything he says about the state of the church, there is absolutely no doubt that it is God who ordained the church and God who called believers to be joined together in it.
I preached an entire message on this once and I’ll post that message when I get a chance. For now, here is a pertinent Scripture on the subject, from the Gospel of John:
13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
13:35 Thus shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
How can you do that by yourself?
The Second Day 
That’s a subordinate characteristic of the church, bro. The “love one another” stuff is important, but subordinate.
We have to get the first things first here before we get after the rest of it. “Love one another” doesn’t stop people from being spiritrual lone rangers.
Not sure what you’re getting at here. It is true, though, that I have only scratched the surface of the local church issue with this post.
While all believer should love one another, and be united in one body, and different local congregations should also unite, such unity is only valid if it is based on a solid foundation; that is, the foundation of Jesus Christ.
I gotta side with Markk, here centuri0n – the call to love one another can’t be fully realised as a spiritual Lone Ranger. There’s no accountability in that, there’s no struggle and journey together in that…
(just for starters) It’s in these reasons that I believe God sees the importance of the local church. SLR’s are cowboys… that quite often promote more harm than good when they do touch on/go near the local church.
…and often, they mask their SLR-ism under the guise of “travelling evangelist” or “circuit speaker”.
I realise I haven’t helped the conversation, but just wanted to add my $0.02 (inc GST).
SLR is a great acronym! And yeah, it is important for travelling ministries to keep themselves tied to a local church to keep themselves accountable. Otherwise, their own ministries will suffer.