People are joining less than ever. Fewer people join the Rotary, the Scouts, or other community groups. Although connected through technology, we live in crowded isolation. The result is profound loneliness and all the foolishness and brokenness that come with going it alone.
Joining a church, however, is a little different than joining another organization. The nature of a local church is unique.
Its members are connected through an intimate, spiritual relationship with Jesus who was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died an innocent death, and was raised on the third day. We are united in Him. We build accountable friendships with a local church family and learn to follow Jesus together, but we are also connected universally with all believers everywhere for all times. It’s really pretty amazing.
But church membership is also different in that the church exists to release its members into the community to be ambassadors for Christ. Our relationship with one another literally shapes our relationships with everyone around us, determines how we love God and serve our neighbors, and sets the trajectory for our life now and forever.
Very simply, there’s no greater predictor for the fruitfulness of our lives than our faithfulness to a local church family of passionate Jesus followers. As fashionable as it is to pooh-pooh on the local church, there’s no movement on the planet that offers greater hope for our greatest need than the local church.
There’s no greater predictor for the fruitfulness of our lives than our faithfulness to a local church family of passionate Jesus followers.
It’s in the local church we learn how to read and apply the Bible, God’s Word, to our lives. It’s in the local church we learn how to love, bear with, and forgive others like we’ve been forgiven. It’s in the local church our character is shaped by other people who are counting on us to love them and help them follow Jesus faithfully. It’s in the local church we discover our purpose in life and how to live for the glory of God.
Apart from the church, however, we are islands floating in our own self-determined ideologies and preferences, largely living as practical narcissists. Apart from the church, we adopt attitudes and habits that harm rather than help other people. Apart from the local church, we find ourselves without the ability to love and to receive love. We find ourselves unhitched from the very foundations that offer the life God designed us to live and the one our hearts cry out to enjoy.
So whether it’s the church I call home or another Gospel-driven church, join in. Show up every Sunday ready to grow in grace and give yourself away. Get into the relational and ministry streams of your church. Keep your kids connected because the priorities of life and the relationships we pursue form our affections and loyalties, and in large part determine the character and eternal destiny of our grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Yes, you will get hurt and disappointed by people in church, but you will also hurt and disappoint people in church. Our failures, as painful as they are, are the canvas upon which God’s grace is displayed and the context in which disciples of Jesus are made.
We tolerate a lot of silliness at school, work, and at the ballpark because that’s part of living with humans. But we choose to overlook offenses because the goal of education, vocation, and recreational sports is worth it.
We all drop the ball. We all have hang-ups that hurt the people we love the most. We don’t celebrate our failures, but we are not surprised by them. It’s these failures, this very sinfulness of ours, which led Jesus to come to earth and give his life on a cruel cross.
So let’s get over our self-righteous “they’re-all-hypocrites-at-that-church-self” and acknowledge that we all fall short of the glory of God. Let’s get past our intellectual dishonesty that proclaims personal autonomy and self-sufficiency while we breath air that’s been given to us by a gracious God.
The church is not a gathering of the Incredibles. It’s a community of the broken ones who have been graced by the God of all eternity and who are learning to live forgiven, free from the moorings of sin. We are not without problems, but our problems are not our identity and they do not determine our future. We are not perfect, but we are redeemed by the only One who is.
His name is Jesus—the wonderful God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth! If He loved us enough to sacrifice His life for us, to die in our place and for our sins, and to establish this wonderful movement called the church, perhaps we too can die to ourselves, overlook the shortcomings of others, build meaningful relationships, and love one another a little more like He loved us.
So as you enjoy the end of the week, make a decision now how you will begin next week. It’s all starts on Sunday. And what we do on Sunday determines everything about our lives for the rest of this week and every week to come.
Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash