One of the things I hear over and over from Christians about their church-search woes, maybe when they have moved to another city and they are looking for a church, or they have come to Antioch after sampling several other places, is this. Why can’t we find a church that has both sound biblical doctrine and strong fellowship? Where is that solid Bible-embracing church that is also warm and welcoming to everyone who comes through the door, a church that is intentional about helping people find their place and build solid relationships with the family of faith? What I hear is that most of the time if they find a church that holds firm to the trustworthy Word as taught, the people there can be as cold as a fish. Instead of receiving a warm welcome and an invitation into fellowship when they walk in, visitors often sit alone and try to enter into corporate worship with people who don’t even acknowledge their existence. The flip side is people who tell me they found a church where everyone loves each other and welcomes those gladly who come to visit, but what they are being taught and what they believe is not grounded in the Word. They are not sound in doctrine. Why can’t we have both? Sound doctrine and healthy community?
I think we can. And we must. Everyone reading this who has been around the Word for more than a few months has already seen that the truth of Scripture demands it. Jesus was, as John said in his prologue, “full of grace and truth.” If that is true of Jesus then it is to be true of his church as well. Grace and truth. Not just truth. Not just grace. You really have neither one unless you have both. I would suggest that the church filled with the frozen chosen, no matter how much they pride themselves on knowing the Word, are not practicing it if there is no reputation there among outsiders or even among themselves that part of the reason they come together on Sunday is to love one another. Jesus said it plainly in the upper room, after Judas had left. He looked the 11 men in the eye and said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Just to make sure they got it, and we get it, he says it three times. Love. One. Another.
A Gospel culture in a church is easily one of its most attractive features. It often makes people want to stay if they visit a couple of times and get a taste of the sweetness of the love they see there for the Lord, his Word, and for the family of faith. It sometimes even makes some people want to come back after they have been gone for a few years.
I recommend a podcast by Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry, both leaders in Immanuel Church in Nashville. The podcast is called “You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors.” The theme of the podcast is Gospel community and how to cultivate it in a church. As Sam said, “There should not be a disconnect between the grace of Jesus as we receive it in the Gospel, and church life.” Church should be something we look forward to on Sunday, certainly not something we dread or do out of duty. Allberry compares coming out of the world and into the fellowship of believers on Sundays to entering Rivendell, in Lord of the Rings: Sam said, “We’ve just been stabbed on Weathertop and we find ourselves in Rivendell where we can find space and healing and help and care.” Sometimes people feel like they can’t come to church if they have messed up, or they have failed in their faith in some way. They can’t come in, they think, looking like they don’t have it all together. But what’s the truth? Not a single one of us have it all together! Each of us stumbled and fell this week, one way or another, and Jesus is calling us to come to him. His arms are open wide to us. And so are our arms in the church to be open wide to one another.
Paul said it like this in Romans: “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
The glory of God can be seen when we welcome one another in the same way that Christ has welcomed us.
J. Mark Fox 