The Necessity of Committing to a Local Church

The Necessity of Committing Yourself to a Local Church Everybody needs a group to be part of. Some people identify with a particular sports team, others with a activity (like gaming), a gang, or a social club. You gain your identity from your group - whether for good or bad. Our particular Church is located in northern Virginia--a very fast growing area with a great number of military personnel and government workers. The area is by nature very transient, and when people commit to our Church (and we commit to them), we know that they will be with us only two or three years before they move on.

Yet, even in this transient atmosphere, the finding of a Church home and the committing to it is of primary importance. Next time you move and finally settle down again, I hope that you will immediately begin to search for a Church home. It is vitally important that you find a group of believers and commit yourself to them. I'd like to show you from Scripture why commitment to a local church is important. Let's face the issue squarely.

Why should you commit yourself to a local Church? Either there are good, Biblical, common sense reasons for doing so; or, frankly, you can forget the whole issue, and we can be content with TV preachers and casual contacts with other Christians. Is it necessary to commit yourself to a local Church? I think that the Bible says, "Yes." Let me give you six reasons: 1. The Bible teaches that every person who accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior also gets a family! Like it or not, the Church is your family. When we receive Christ, we also receive a family.

The Bible calls God your Father (Romans 8:15). Jesus is your brother (Hebrews 2:11), although a special brother indeed! Christians are called your brothers and sisters (James 2:15). These terms all indicate a close relationship. It may be a relationship which we would prefer to deny, but we don't have that option. We are family, we are related to each other, and we should be in relationship with one another.

To cut ourselves off from our family displeases our heavenly Father (Philippians 2:1-2). 2. The Bible teaches that every person who becomes a believer is also included in a body. In Ephesians 4:25, Paul makes a statement that cuts against the grain of our individuality. He says, "We are all members of one body.

" What body? The body of Christ (Ephesians 5:29-30). God's purpose does not end with our salvation. It is His further intent to knit His children together into a working organism, a living body of believers. This theme is one that appears often in Scripture as in 1 Corinthians 12:13-27. This is a very important passage for every Christian to read and understand.

In verse 13, Paul writes, "When you were baptized, you were baptized by one Spirit into one body." In the verses which follow, Paul compares the Church to a physical body. And individual believers are compared to the various parts that make up that body. The metaphor of the Body indicates close relationship. Paul makes it clear that no part of a body can function effectively alone.

Each part needs the other to be complete: "And the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you;' or again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you'" (verse 21). The Reverend Louis H. Evans, Sr., once told of a man writing him to ask for his letter of Church membership. The man stated that he was quitting as a Church member, but was not quitting as a Christian.

The man explained the he just didn't feel any need of the Church and so he was simply going to belong to Christ. Dr. Evans wrote back that he could not give the man his letter of Church membership, because he would and could not participate in such a bloody activity! Bloody activity? Yes, Dr. Evans saw the man's desire to commit himself to Jesus but not the Church as an act of decapitation. Christ is the Head of the Body according to the Bible.

How can you severe the Head from the Church which is His Body? Like the man who wrote Dr. Evans, we try to decapitate the Body when we profess our commitment to Christ, but not the Church. "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you'" (I Corinthians 12:21). 3. God's purpose is not just to save you.

He is also building something. Another key passage on commitment to other Christians is found in 1 Peter 2:4-5: As you come to him, the Living Stone--rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him--you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. God's purpose is to bring men to the Living Stone and then to build us together with other "stones." A brick by itself is useless. It is useful only as a home for bugs and worms to live under.

In the same way, God's house will be incomplete without you. We are living bricks that must be built together with other bricks to form God's spiritual house. Some of us will be for support, others will form the doorway, still others will be for holy beauty, and some will form the steps which touch the ground and lead up into the spiritual house. Are you allowing God to place you close to other living bricks? It is God's purpose to build you together with other people. 4.

Relationship with other Christians is essential for your holiness. 1 John 1:7 says, "But IF WE WALK IN THE LIGHT as he himself is in the light, WE HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH ONE ANOTHER, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin." The introductory "if" confronts us with two related results: (1) If we are walking with Jesus in the light, then we will be having fellowship with other Christians. (2) How do we experience cleansing from sin? The way John arranges the words may mean that as we walk in the light this results in fellowship with other Christians; and through fellowshipping with other Christians, we experience the power of cleansing from sin and error. We could diagram John's thought like this: IF we walk in the light THEN we will fellowship with others THEN we get our lives clean from sin When we are in fellowship with other Christians, we are forced to clean up our act and become more like Jesus Christ.

There's no accountability between you and your "Tape of the Month." You don't have to practice forgiveness between yourself and your television evangelist. But when you meet other Christians in a local Church, they see who you really are. And you will have to learn forgiveness if you begin rubbing shoulders with other Christians. I guarantee it.

Fellowship forces you to change. A good Church will motivate you to holiness. Relationship with other Christians is not optional. It is essential for your purity. 5.

Strength for a Christian comes from grace. Many of the "means of grace" are found only in a Body of Christians meeting together. The word "grace" is used two different ways in the New Testament. Usually, and most of the time, it is used to speak of God's mercy and undeserved blessing. But it is also used in the Bible to speak about the power that God gives a believer for spiritual growth and obedience.

Do you want to grow in the Christian life? Then you need to know how to get grace. The Reformers used the term "means of grace" to describe certain channels which God uses to give us power for our spiritual growth. You have probably heard baptism and the Lord's Supper called "means of grace." But there are also other means of grace--other ways that God pours His grace into our lives and provides power for us to grow. Fellowship with other Christians is a channel of grace (Hebrews 10:24-25).

The regular preaching and teaching of God's Word is a channel of grace (Acts 20:32). Even singing together with other Christians is a means of grace according to the Bible (Acts 16:25; Colossians 3:16). Fellowship, teaching, and corporate singing normally happen in a Church. If we remain outside of the Church, we miss God's grace through these channels. And then there is the grace that comes through the channel of spiritual gifts.

God has given every Christian a spiritual gift. Peter says we should "use our gifts to administer God's grace" into the lives of other Christians (1 Peter 4:10). If we are not committed to a Church, then we cut ourselves off from the grace which comes from the exercise of other people's spiritual gifts. In addition to spiritual gifts, there are certain activities which should be occurring in the Body of Christ which may or may not require the exercise of a spiritual gift. Joseph Aldrich in his book, Lifestyle Evangelism (pp.

109-110), lists thirty-four of these activities which God commands Christians to be involved in with "one another." Examples are "showing hospitality to one another," "being involved in intercessory prayer with one another," "serving one another in love," "bearing one another's burdens," "confessing our sins to one another," etc., etc. These "one another" activities are all paths which God uses to get His living spiritual power into our lives. These are corporate commands.

They occur only in the context of a Church fellowship. We need all the grace we can get in this day and age. And many Christians are weak and stumbling because they lack grace. Spiritual lone rangers aren't going to survive in the days to come. We need each other.

Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto! Watchman Nee said, "Let us therefore not be content with personal grace, but rather seek to gain corporate grace." (Assembling Together). Are you content with personal grace or are you also seeking the strength that comes from corporate grace? It is recorded in the Old Testament that "one thousand chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight." (Deuteronomy 32:30). Naturally speaking, if one can chase a thousand, then we would expect two to case two thousand.

Yet God says two will chase ten thousand--an additional eight thousand! Now either God has poor math skills or there is a message there for us about the grace and power available to those who will commit themselves together with others. 6. Relationship with other Christians is a command from God. Our responsibility for regular fellowship with a group of committed believers is clearly stated in Hebrews 10:24-25: "And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. We must not forsake our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but we must encourage one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.

" Two related truths come from this passage: (1) We have a responsibility to stimulate and encourage other Christians; (2) We can only do this if we do not forsake "our own assembling." This last phrase obviously takes it for granted that all of us will be related to a group which we can properly call "our own assembly." The essential step which brings us into this kind of relationship is the same that brings us into proper relationship with God or with our mate. It is the step of commitment. If you have already made a commitment to God, you should follow that with this commitment--to a group of fellow believers.

"Thanksgiving" Thank You, Father, for the inner promptings of Your Spirit. Thank You, Father, for fresh truth to live by. Thank You, Father, for people whose lives illustrate Your Word. Thank You, Father, for this Church to which I belong, for those who help me, intercede for me, support me, love me, inspire me. Lord, I cannot live as a Christian without them, for I need that part of Yourself that You have placed within them.

And they cannot live without me, because they need the gifts that You have deposited in me. Lord, free us of the selfishness, the self-centeredness, the ego-trips, the independence of spirit that keeps us from binding ourselves into one. Lord, help us to think first of those things which will benefit others before we begin listing our own needs. Give us grace to live in such a way that we draw attention to You. Amen.

--Bryan Jeffery Leech Want some guidelines to follow as you look for the fellowship that God wants you to be committed to? See How to Pick a Church.