“Don’t tell me how to worship God. My faith is between me and God, and yours is between you and God. You have no right to butt into my relationship with God.”
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard this. It’s an error that, unfortunately, seems prevalent in our society whenever discussions of church membership arise. In his book, The Church, Edmund Clowney writes, “Christians are not just born-again individuals, they are a family, ‘spiritual ethnics’, the new people of God in Christ. To forget this is to undercut the practice of brotherhood in all the dimensions of daily life.”
Clowney touches on one major reason for joining the church, that of brotherhood, or family. Christ does not save individuals “in a vacuum.” He saves people into a family of like-minded believers, a chosen people called to worship the one triune God. A family called and continuously equipped to bless one another and the surrounding world. Along with the benefits of this calling, the church can expect to be misunderstood, maligned, hated and often violently persecuted. Weathering the storms of persecution, however severe, is one reason family is important. Christians need one another for encouragement, help, correction and even sometimes rebuke. But enduring persecution is not the only reason the church family is important.
God has equipped every believer with spiritual gifts vital to the health of the church. You have gifts; I have gifts. The church needs us present in it to exercise these gifts. When we eschew membership in a local church body, we not only forfeit the blessings of others’ spiritual gifts, we also deny the church the blessing of our own gifts. In many ways this stunts the growth of the church.
In a culture such as ours, rife with mega-churches, it is easy to forget that church growth is not about numbers, but rather holiness. And holiness is understood, nurtured and matured through relationships with Christ and his followers in the church. Christians are not only “iron” in need of sharpening, they are also fellow sharpeners. Pastor David Stewart reiterated this idea of church as family in a sermon he delivered at Free Grace. Saying it as simply as possible: “Worship is to be experienced among the saints.” The matter-of-fact delivery of Pastor Stewart’s statement is akin to saying that as breathing is necessary for life, so individual participation in the family of God, the church, is vital to carrying out true biblical worship.
Another important reason to join the church is to help address the needs of the secular world around us. “Only God’s truth can set people free; for the church to concede the secular assumption of a chance universe is to deny both Christ’s lordship and its own meaning. The church is the community of the Word, the Word that reveals the plan and purpose of God. In the church the gospel is preached, believed, obeyed. It is the pillar and ground of the truth because it holds fast the Scriptures,” writes Clowney.
We were never meant as Christians to hide our faith under a basket, but rather to display it so that God might be glorified. As Clowney stated above, the gospel is found in the church, and it is the church’s call to shine it forth into the world (Mt. 5:14-16). The world desperately needs the gospel message, and although we can as individuals present the message, the church is God’s primary means of grace in reaching the world with the good news of salvation.
Additionally, Christians have a clear call to care for “widows and orphans.” It is not unreasonable to infer that our call extends even further than just widows and orphans, however, to all people who may be suffering. The church is not only called to love others in need, it is also uniquely equipped for the task.
Christians have been given spiritual understanding, transformed hearts, minds and wills, direct access to God’s very throne room and release from the tyranny of fear. We display this uniqueness chiefly by serving others through the vehicle of the church; as we carry out God’s call to love the world around us, it is through the church that we are able to show the world that our God is alive, beautiful, holy, gracious, loving and sovereign. And what is the primary way the world judges our religion? Our faith? Even our God? It scrutinizes the church, searching for either hypocrisy or genuineness. Becoming a church member is the first step in proving to the world that it can “know we are Christians by our love.”
These are only a few brief arguments for joining the church–food for thought, if you will. Prayerfully consider these, and other reasons you have heard, then answer God’s call on your life to commit, via membership, to a local church body. Without a church family, your spiritual life is sorely missing something. Conversely, there’s a church somewhere that’s missing something you have been called to provide.
~Ken Morris