I joined a church today

I joined a church today[1]

My wife and I joined a new church today.

There was nothing wrong with the old one – we just happened to move 200klm away. There’s lots of bad reasons to change churches but moving away is a good one.

So, why join this particular church?

There are many churches in our new place, so why chose this one?

The new church passed our core criteria. The Bible is well-taught. The gospel is on lips and in lives. The church has an outward-looking heart with a desire to see people become Christians. It is sensitive and responsive to what is happening in the wider community. There’s plenty of people with whom we can expect to have good fellowship. There’s good opportunity for us to serve according to our gifts and circumstances. It is well led.

These are all important boxes to tick.

The church also passes some other tests. Its local to our home which makes it easy for us to get there and to invite friends and neighbours to come with us. We have family and friends there, so there is an easy entry. It’s belongs to our background tradition, so we should have a good fit in terms of the teaching, style and tone.

So, how are we joining this church?

We turned up on our first Sunday after moving and will do so every week that we are in town. Heb 10:25!

We stayed after the service to talk with people and start making new friends.

We signed up to contribute to the regular funds of the church as well as to a particular ministry project.

We registered for the church’s newsfeed and directory.

We volunteered to host some members of a visiting mission team to lunch in a few weeks’ time.

We will wait to see where we can be useful longer term and then commit to ongoing service.

There’s nothing special in any of this. We are just doing the normal things that are part of being with the people of God.

We did all this because we have learned over the years that people who only dip their toes in a church tend to stay on the margins and then drift on. We don’t want to be spiritual butterflies who flit between churches with the greatest of ease. We want to belong.

A perfect church?

Right now we are enamoured with the new church and it’s a breath of fresh air in our lives.

However, we know that we will soon discover its imperfections and contribute to them. We know the imperfections are there, because they are in every church mentioned in the NT and throughout history. These imperfections come from people like us who are somewhere on the journey between conversion and glorification – we are not there yet.

We know there will be annoying and difficult people whose behaviours may be challenging. They are our opportunity to serve the body and to grow in our discipleship – for growth invariably occurs at points of discomfort and challenge. These have been called sandpaper Christians – they irritate and may hurt, but they help strip back our faults and make us better people.

Annoying and difficult those these people may be, they are part of the body of Christ. The Father chose them in eternity and sent the Son for their salvation. The Son died so they could be forgiven and adopted in his family. The Spirit brought them to life, has kept them in Christ and enables the unique service to each. They have the same destiny as us in eternal life. If that how the Lord sees and treats them, who are we to see or treat them less than he does? How can we gather worthily at the table to remember the body of the crucified Christ if we do not also discern and honour his earthly body in the church (1 Cor 11:29; Matt 5:23-24)?

We know the leaders of our new church will disappoint us at times. Their imperfections will be writ large because they visibly impact the whole body. They will lack wisdom, make mistakes, become wearied and all the rest. But we will still honour our leaders because the Bible tells us so (Heb 13:7) and because they serve the flawless chief shepherd (2 Pet 2:25; 5:1-4). We will honour them by praying for them, respecting their decisions and cooperating with their plans. None of this puts them above disagreement, scrutiny or accountability, but it is a respectful rather than rebellious disagreement, scrutiny and accountability. 

A big call

It’s a big call to leave jobs, relocate, make a new home and entrust our earthly affairs to new professionals.

It’s bigger call to entrust our soul to a new church.

We are careful in choosing the new professionals to care for our earthly affairs and are at least equally careful in choosing those who will care for our souls.

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[1] Written on Sunday 22 Dec 2019