[American Constitutionalist]

" often hear the very silly notion that "Well, I don't need any church or pastor to tell me what's in the Scripture...I can read it on my own!"

It's not a silly notion " IF " the person is filled with the Holy Spirit , and Jesus told us that when the helper comes he will lead you into all truth.....
What about those 500 years ago ? 1000 years ago who would have taken a voyage in a boat or long distance trip to any were without a church or pastor ? we are to study the word of God ourselves, it's dangerous to always depend on other's ALWAYS for our spiritual growth.
However, we do need other's to help us in the study and teaching of God's word.

[Claud]

It's not a silly notion " IF " the person is filled with the Holy Spirit , and Jesus told us that when the helper comes he will lead you into all truth.....

But let's not forget a couple things here. Our Lord said that to his Apostles--perhaps we can extrapolate that to all Christians, but that is going farther than the text explicitly says. And the "you" Christ uses is a plural one: "he will lead you all (ὑμᾶς) into all truth."

So does "you all" mean every single individual separately? Or does "you all" mean the entire Church, collectively, with the Apostles at its head? I rather think the latter--that the Church as a whole will be led into all truth by the Holy Ghost but that individual believers may or may not be. And I think Christian history bears that out--because certainly you and I know of people whose supposedly inspired thoughts produced some noxious heresy.

[Claud]

What about those 500 years ago ? 1000 years ago who would have taken a voyage in a boat or long distance trip to any were without a church or pastor ?

If there wasn't a priest on board toting a breviary and Missal, then I doubt anyone would have had a Bible on board. People back then would have been more concerned about being without the sacraments than without the Scripture.