New Year's Resolution: Commit To a Local Church
I remember my first holiday with my wife's family before we got married. I was welcomed warmly by her mom and dad. I enjoyed excellent food. I was even told tons of funny and embarrassing stories about my wife in her younger years! I got to taste the fruit of family life, but I was not family yet. Boyfriends come and go, but family is meant to be for a lifetime.
God calls us to belong within the church as family, not as the boyfriend at his first Christmas dinner. Believers are not meant to "date" a local church as a perpetual visitor. God calls all believers to membership in a local church.
1 Corinthians 12:12 reminds us that, "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ." Here we see that a church "member" is a biblical concept meant to make us think of limbs attached to a body, not of a dues based relationship like Planet Fitness. This means that church membership, despite what you might have heard, isn't about having your name on a roll, but about a commitment to a family. The point isn't simply church attendance, a livestream view, or a name on a list. The point is a shared devotion to Jesus and to one another.
As 2022 arrives and New Year's Resolutions are made, have we considered renewing our commitment to a local church? This is not a commitment to watch a livestream or walk into a building from time to time but rather a commitment to a family of faith. This begins with making the weekly "family get together" a priority but it doesn't end there.
Believers aren't simply meant to be a house guest in the family of faith. The local church is meant to be a family united under One Heavenly Father, in Jesus our Savior and Brother, indwelt with One Spirit and Comforter. This community is meant to be something that the world cannot counterfeit. Citizens of a kingdom that is "not of this world" are meant to enjoy a community that is "not of this world."
The church isn't a girlfriend we are meant to share a one-time holiday with but she is the bride of Christ that gathers weekly for Word and Sacrament, and shares a deep faith-filled commitment. We are meant to live out the "one anothers" of the New Testament. How can we "pray for one another" if we don't know anyone (James 5:16)? How can we "put up with another" if we are only friends on Facebook (Colossians 3:13)? Hebrews 10:24-25 encourages us to "consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."
As believers we are called to more than casually dating the local church. We are called to commitment to the local body and to love the church, even with her spots and blemishes. Boyfriends come and go, but God's family is eternal.