Since I moved to the Triangle area of North Carolina, I’ve been visiting several churches in search for a home. Back in New Jersey I attended and served at a small church plant where everyone knows each other and sees each other on a pretty regular basis during the week. I lived, worked, served, played, and did church in the same city, and it was the same place I went to school in as well. The church I went to was where I had been planted for close to 5 years, with the exception of a year abroad in Mexico where I worked in a church who supported and took me in as their own. At my church I never wondered if I was supposed to be there or how to get connected. If anything, I was someone a new person would ask those questions of. When I met a new person, I could tell them where they would fit and how they might get involved. I knew people from most of the other local churches in the area; there are so few missionally-focused, community-loving, biblically-based churches (phew that’s a mouthful) up North that it is easy to be in a network and to see people on a regular basis and get to know them in depth.
Down here, however, is a whole other ball game. There are *multiple* missionally-focused, community-loving, bible-based churches here with big urban outreach programs. Compared to what I am used to in my small plant church, they have giant worship services in many places at once. Each has 55 (estimated) community groups all over the Triangle. There are counseling services, baseball teams, community groups based on age/gender/status and about a million other things to get plugged into and/or apply yourself and your skills towards. Sometimes it’s easy to feel like a small fish in a big pond.
This is the South. So, there are a lot of what I would call “traditional” Baptist churches, if that’s your fancy. But there are also like 30 or 40 emerging churches with wonderful pastors who are intelligent, humorous, humble and bring the word with a theological knowledge that is spellbounding! I’ve already cried, laughed, and been schooled during several sermons that I’ve heard while here. Also, there’s an enormous pool of different kinds of congregants. From kids to young professionals, artists to academics, laymen to seminarians, locals to transplants, married couples to elderly people. As I was saying to my pastor back home: It’s like church heaven. Being from Georgia, he knew just what I was talking about. The options of great places to be planted are copious wells of resources and potential.
At first, going to these various churches feels a little like being a single person dating new people in hopes of finding a mate. Could I and this church stay together a long time? Would I be faithful here or would I just get bored? Are we like-minded and compatible? Do we share a common vision, lifestyle, purpose? Do I like hanging out with it? Does it make me feel good? It makes me have to pose questions to myself, and reevaluate what I am looking for. I am after all committing myself to a body of members, eventually to a small group which comes with even deeper responsibilities, and potentially - if I stick around long enough – roles in leadership provided that I continue to be in line with the church’s vision and movement. Right?
Well, I said “at first” because it’s dawned on me that maybe this is not the right way to go about it. After all, aren’t all these questions rather idealistic and me-centered? "Ideal" and "biblical" are very different things (I can speak from experience.)
So, biblically, why do we go to church? What is the purpose? Well that’s a big question with a big answer, and I’m no expert in ecclesiology. But I know this: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25). Also, “you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1Corinthians12:27). We “go” to church because we are the church. We don’t date churches, we are married to Christ (Ephesians 5:25-27).
Church, for me, is practice not
theory. I take the vocation of community seriously, and I love it. Once upon a
time I would not have stepped foot inside a church building, let alone allowed
Christians into my life. And now I yearn for and accept my need for Christian
brothers and sisters to be welcomed into the many layers of my daily life and who I truly am. It was a fearful thing for me to go to church the very first time, because I carried a bag full of prejudices that I was not quite willing to let go of. But there I found a group of real, actual people and not figments of my subconscious.
Biblically, we have the warning that a body is not complete without all of its parts. A hand removed from a body is useless, and a body without a hand is lacking something significant. In a sense, it is a place where I am needed for whatever it is that I am in Christ. This is for the interdependency of a thriving church body, both on the micro (local church) and macro (global church in unity) level, to serve and love the world around us. When Jesus prayed for the unity believers, He asked we would be one as He and His Father are one. It’s written that Jesus is the Head over the Church, so even the highest leader is the servant of all. He said where two or more of us are gathered in His name, He is in the midst of us. That’s an awesome claim. It’s for His glory and renowned that we assemble, it’s for worship, it’s for Him, and it is to provide for those beyond the walls of whatever warehouse or library or underground basement or house that we are meeting in. It’s life together, in Him.
So, as I continue my search, I will
do so prayerfully and open-heartedly even when I am scared. I’ll ask God where
I am to go rather than asking the church what it can offer me. Church involves a lot of submitting to one another in trust. It's hard. I still carry a bag of prejudices towards Christians, I don't lie about that. It isn't always easy to love people who are all striving to be like the Messiah and messing up along the way, obviously! But that bag is a lot lighter than it used to be. And most importantly, God sends me. It's His plan to give us a place.
This is mission: to be sent to one another in agape love, to be in community, and to serve.