The Local Church Is Essential

Years ago, in the early stages of planting Cities Church, I wrote an article at desiringGod.org that began, “Membership in your local church is one of the most important things about you.” 

And I believe that now more than ever. 

In our age of consumerism, anti-institutionalism, and high accessibility to spiritual resources, it’s too easy for the local church to be pushed to the periphery. For many American Christians, it can be that thing we do if there’s anything left over from the increasingly long list of other priorities. Many consider it an optional affiliation, like a club, or worse, like a service provider of religious goods and services. 

Few would say the local church is a bad thing, but even fewer would consider it a central piece of their lives, or even of their relationship to Jesus.

But that’s not the vision of the local church we find in the Bible. 

Perhaps there’s no better time for us to kick the tires a bit and freshly ponder the question: What is the local church, and what does it mean to be a member of it?

Or one way we might simplify that question is: “Who are we?”

Who Are We?

In short, the local church is a community of Christians who gather regularly to worship Jesus and who live as the on-the-ground expression of his supremacy by making disciples.

This is a loaded summary statement, of course, especially the part on “making disciples.” 

Making disciples is “the how” to expressing Jesus’s supremacy. It means we multiply and mature disciples — in distance and depth, by conversion and counsel, for all the world and for all of me. And primary to this discipleship task is the church’s affirming and reaffirming a member’s union with Christ through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. That is the calling, and authority, Jesus has given the local church, and it’s a role that the church fulfills together. As Jonathan Leeman explains, 

The local church is the institution that Jesus created and authorized to pronounce the gospel of the kingdom, to affirm gospel professors, to oversee their discipleship, and to expose imposters. (Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus, 64)

When churches baptize believers or welcome Christians into their membership, the church is vouching for both the individual’s confession (do they understand gospel?) and the individual as a confessor (are they walking in step with their confession?).

Your Christian ID

Years ago I was asked by a friend new to church, “So how do other people know that I’m a Christian? Is there an ID to carry around that I could show them?”

It was a great question, and my answer, eagerly, was baptism! Baptism is the visible symbol of God’s regenerative work in a person’s life. Baptism goes public with what the gospel does in action. 

That’s true, but it’s only half-right — because baptism is a one-time event. The people who were at your baptism saw you get baptized, but what about all the people who weren’t there? How do they know you’re really united to Jesus by faith? How do they know that you’ve been spiritually raised from the dead and seated with Jesus in the heavenly places?

Because you’ve been baptized into the membership of a local church. Because you’ve been welcomed into a community of believers who say: “Yep, this person is alive in Christ.” 

And how do they “say” that? 

By receiving you as a covenant member and by sharing with you in the Lord’s Table.

The gospel ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Table are ordinances that Jesus has given to the church to initially affirm and continually reaffirm a person’s belonging to Jesus. Which means a better answer to my friend, one that is more than half-right, is to say that your “Christian ID”, as it were, is your baptism and your membership in a local church where you share the Lord’s Table.

“Parnell, How Can I Know You’re a Christian?”

So say someone asks me, “Parnell, how can I know you’re a Christian?”

My answer should not be “Because I’m a pastor.” 

Neither should I share my personal testimony, though that would be a good thing to do as soon as possible. 

The best answer, however, is to say that I’ve been baptized into the triune name, and I’m a member of Cities Church, and if you want, you can come with me to one of our worship gatherings and you can watch me share in the Lord’s Table with brothers and sisters who affirm my union with Jesus. And if you believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, you can be baptized too and join us, and we’ll do the same thing for you. 

This is God’s design for how we and others can know that we are Christians.

Yes, the local church is essential.