Church is not a mindless tradition that we as Christians attend to once a week. And it's not a place where we gather with friends to hear a motivating message about how to live better lives. No. It is much bigger and immensely more important.
"What is the really important thing that is happening in the world in our generation? Where are the really significant events taking place? What is the most important thing? Where do you need to look in the modern world to see the most significant event from a divine perspective? Where is the focus of God's activity in history?
The most significant thing happening in history is the calling, redeeming, and perfecting of the people of God. God is building the church of Jesus Christ. The rest of history is simply a stage God erects for that purpose. He is calling out a people. He is perfecting them. He is changing them. History's great climax comes when God brings down the curtain on this bankrupt world and the Lord Jesus Christ arrives in his infinite glory. The rest of history is simply the scaffolding for the real work...
And there will come a day when God will pull down the scaffolding of world history. Do you know what he will be pointing to when he says to the whole creation, "There is my masterpiece"? He will be pointing to the church of Jesus Christ. In the forefront of it all will be the Lord Jesus himself who will come and say, "Here am I, and the children you have given me, perfected in the beauty of holiness." - Scottish preacher Eric Alexander as quoted by Richard Phillips in Masculine Mandate
Let this encourage you. God is building & perfecting his people for that glorious day of His return. And how has God purposed to bring this about? Through your local church. We must never forget that God uses means, and what a glorious means this is! Therefore, when you take the time to cook a meal for the family who is extremely busy with the birth of a newborn, you are God's chosen hammer to drive another nail in the framework of the house of God. When you sit down with your friend in small group to pray with him for an upcoming surgery, you are the chisel that God used to carefully sculpt His monument in progress. And when you gently rebuke your brother in Christ to turn from his sin and toward his Savior, you are the brush in the hand of God that gently stroked the canvas of His Masterpiece. God is perfecting His people, and it is a glorious work!
Call me weird, but one of things that I really enjoy doing is helping people find a good, gospel-centered, bible-believing church in their area for them to attend. I believe that where you attend church is an extremely important part of your Christian life. Therefore, after having had to find a good church to attend twice in the past 5 years (due to relocating to a different area of the Midwest) and after helping many people try to find a good church in their area, I have compiled a short (and hopefully helpful) primer on how to find a good local church. For future reference, you will be able to access this short how-to on one of the tabs at the top of the blog. I hope this serves you well!
There are a few tools that I use first to look for a solid church in a particular area. I use these because I am totally on board with these ministries and would more than likely recommend any church that is affiliated with them. Here are the four:
Sovereign Grace Ministries: The church that my wife & I attend is part of Sovereign Grace Ministries. I can't say enough good things about this ministry. If there is one in your area, your church search may be easier than you think. The Gospel Coalition: This is a gospel-centered organization for pastors & their churches. You can find out more about them here. 9Marks: 9Marks is "a ministry dedicated to equipping church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources" whose goal is to help create "churches that display the glory of God." You can find out more about them here. Acts 29 Network: This is Mark Driscoll's church planting network.
So, here's how I would suggest you use these 4 tools. Go to each website and do a search for churches in your area. If you find one in your area, I would definitely add that to list of churches to visit. Now, obviously, there are lots of great churches out there that will not show up on these tools. These 4 sites are just meant to help you find some of the great churches out there. This is just the first place I would go to start looking because of the high quality of these gospel-centered ministries.
Now, before you expand your search any further, you should probably sit down and figure out exactly what you are looking for in a church. One of the great things that looking for a local church does is that it drives you right back to Scripture in order to help you figure out what the bible teaches. Consider it a mini-theology course. It will force you figure out what the heck you believe.
Now, maybe you've already done this. If so, awesome! But if not, you will need to decide on what are theological must-haves (gospel-centered, justification by faith alone, God's Word as inerrant, etc.), theological convictions (infant baptism or believer's baptism? tongues, prophecy, & healing or not? Calvinist or Arminian? women as possible pastors or not?), and preferences (worship style, dress code, small groups, etc.) in a church. Obviously, theological must-haves & theological convictions are much more important in a church than your preferences. Here's an good rule-of-thumb to go by: The church you decide on must meet all of your theological must-haves, most (if not all) of your theological convictions, and some of your preferences.
Once you've figured out your list of theological must-haves, theological convictions, and preferences, start compiling a list of churches to visit by looking at each church's:
Statement of Faith on their website to see if they match your theological must-haves and convictions.
Vision/Purpose Statement on their website to see if you are on board with them.
Example of what a Sunday gathering might look like to see how they match up with your preferences.
After you've compiled the list, start visiting each church and whittle down the list. While you won't be able to get all of your questions answered by visiting each church's website, you should be able to answer almost all the rest by visiting the church itself. You can tell a lot about a church by the books they stock in their bookstore, by the songs they sing during worship, by the pastor's sermon, and by the people themselves.
Once you've whittled down your list to a few that you are seriously interested in, I would recommend scheduling a meeting with the pastor of each church left on your list. In that venue, you can ask more specific questions that you would like answered before you decide on which church you want to attend. These might be questions you never got answered when you were looking through the church's website. Or they may be more theological questions that can be best answered by the pastor himself. Whatever the questions might be, it's good to sit down and have a conversation with the pastor himself to get the best understanding of what a church is like.
After you've done all that, the last and most important thing you can do is pray. God is glorified when you acknowledge that no amount of research could ever replace the guiding hand of God in your decision of where to attend church.
For your added benefit, I've added some additional helpful resources to aid you in your church search. Hope this helps!
This is a testimony of Allison Morgan who attends Mark Dever's church in Washington D.C. I've reposted most of it below. As you read through it, know that this is one of the many reasons why being a part of the local church is so important.
it’s easy, in life, to take a survey of your present condition and ask, ‘why?’ why am i permitted to suffer? why am i permitted to prosper? why am i left wanting? why am i left with excess?
…why?
i am not going to sit here and tell you my life has been a struggle, though certain aspects have been very trying at times. i have had a good life…a wonderful, loving family…a fine education and i have moved on and started a family of my own.
but i have private (or so i think) moments of turmoil.
i can say with confidence that much of my turmoil in life has occurred over the last 4 years, since marriage, frankly. i smile when i write that, because zero of it has to do with marriage! my husband is the greatest on earth, a loving and faithful leader in this partnership. but it does seem as though we have collided with hardship quite often since becoming married and moving to DC.
i have no idea why. and truthfully, i’ve never thought much about the divine timing of it all.
i would say i went through some of the darkest days of my life, while we waded through infertility. i am not proud to admit that i asked God questions i would never publicly repeat. i accused God of things i would never verbally express. i am ashamed of the person i warped into during those excruciating 12 months. those months were hard. so. very. hard.
and then a few months after isaac’s birth, i spiraled into physical agony that i never really expected could be possible. and it’s funny because many people see the side of my life that i make public. i wear a smile and i do all i can to disguise the pain, but facts are …i suffer from a rather rare nerve condition in my jaw that can easily level my life, completely. one day i’m fine…the next day i am dragged in to a surgeons office in 2 seconds flat. and then another surgeon. and then another. i actually meet with the HEAD of the trigeminal neuraglia team at Johns Hopkins next month to clarify some things. the #1 hospital in the country for 18 years straight. what i have is called “the suicide disease.” and yes, i understand why. you can pray for me.
yes, i have a good life. but it does carry some scars. i have wrestled with sovereignty. with God’s ultimate purposes, which seem strange…but holy. there are dark moments… i cry and have cried my fair share of tears.
let’s get to the point.
chad and i were taking a walk the other night, with isaac, in the stroller. he was laughing about how “i thought i married Toyota, but facts are, i married GM.” admit it, it’s funny. :) he’s very good natured, but i have all but bankrupted this family with medical bills!
and i caught myself saying, “Thank God i married you when i was 25…had we met a few years later, you never would have married me! all my health problems started when i was 27!”
and in my heart, i’ve always thought that it was God’s blessing to preserve my health until i was married. until i had a teammate to help me through it. until somebody could rub my back late at night and tell me i was still going to be ok. to push me through one. more. day… and all these years i attributed God’s timing to the blessing of Chad. “i was sustained, because God know i would never have survived all this on my own….”
and then tonight happened.
i was actually 27 years old when i became a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. i can’t even write that sentence without my screen getting blurry as the tears cloud my vision. while chad is wonderful and the best husband i could ever ask for…that’s not what kept me going. it was my church.
and there is no coincidence that we joined CHBC in March a few years back…and got our first fertility diagnosis that May. there is no coincidence that i received that sad news with the incident of sitting under the best Biblical teaching i could have ever received. that coupling was purposed for me. it was no coincidence that my most CHALLENGING times, physically, occurred on fridays or mondays at the doctors office…either of which are the closest business days to SUNDAYS, when i was fed Truth, to recharge my heart.
it dawned on me, in God’s loving providence, that God reserved my life’s MOST challenging experiences for when i would be sitting in a church that has continued to sustain me. i wish there were words for all that i feel for this body of Christ. for these friends. for this unbelievable example of Love and Unity i share with these 600 people. i had no idea church could be like this…
this church isn’t a club…or a place where we gather to hang out with people who are JUST like us. where we can find a common bond…or build relationships on human, earthly commonalities. this isn’t a shopping center where we can go and pick up something that serves our purpose. and this certainly isn’t a place where we all gather for an emotional experience that provides warm fuzzies for our egos. conversely, church for me can be painful at times…and that’s ok. it’s refining. it’s clear. it’s sharp. and it takes me from a place of comfort, into a place where i recognize i need something infinitely bigger than myself, or all this world can provide.
i say all of this, because our dear shepherd and tireless pastor, Mark Dever, has been leading our congregation for 15 years! and tonight we held a TOP SECRET surprise celebration for him, which was more meaningful than i even expected.
i’ll post a video of it — which will probably seem boring and pointless – but i wanted to post it for myself. just because i never want to forget God’s provision to me, through this church, and in particular, this man — our pastor.
Mark is, admittedly, larger than life for chad and me. i first visited this church back in 2001, and for various reasons, decided not to commit to it, though i’ll never forget the mark this man left on my life. his words resounded in my heart and there was something undeniable in his messages. i came to my senses years later…and regret not softening my heart to this church, MUCH MUCH sooner…
he came to our church in 1994 and this week, celebrates 15 years with us. within the last 15 years, he kick-started an intern program that has discipled men and sent them off to start their own churches across the four corners of our world. and tonight, MANY of them flew back in as a surprise for mark — and to say it was moving, is an understatement.
mark has sent men out from our church over the last 15 years….6 of which have started churches in foreign countries…and TWENTY of which have started churches in the united states. his legacy is astounding and His love for people is awe-inspiring… our building may be 200 years old, and our church may seem to function under a rather archaic set of guidelines (from your perspective!), what actually transpires inside the four walls of this church is astounding. our church operates as a very well-oiled machine: a factory for God-honoring and Spirit-led pastors who desire to take the Word around the world.
rather than clinging to the people he’s invested the most time into, and rather than transitioning us to multiple services and multiple locations…mark is most pleased to send those people out and have them reproduce healthy churches for the Kingdom. his vision is biblical and his example is so challenging.
and so tonight, we honored mark and his wife, connie. the six minute video starts off with us waiting for him….SHH! and then his arrival…! then …one by one….the pastors of those 26 churches from all over our globe walked out from behind the stage….(not a dry eye in the house!) then mark was presented with a book of letters that each intern, and each pastor has written just for him…. and THEN! his wife, connie had re-composed the music for mark’s all- time favorite hymn, and had the congregation sing it to him as a surprise…. and finally, a group shot of all the pastors that can trace their origins (and some, even, their salvation!) to mark’s ministry to them as their pastor/mentor….
i was literally walking on air, back to my car tonight.
yes, my life can be hard. and yes, we all have our challenges… but God’s timing can never ben questioned and His Word can be trusted. His mercies are new…every day. and this church body, along with my pastor, are a perfect example of His mercies exemplified.
i mean this: i am, without question, blessed beyond all measure… i am utterly humbled that i am among the few throughout all of history, who can call this church my home….
