Why Should I Join A Church?

This is the beginning of a three-week course that is designed to give you an opportunity to learn more about who we are as a church. We’re calling it Membership Matters. By attending you are not obligated to join, but if you would like to join, completing the class is the first (1st) step we will ask you to take. Membership Matters is designed to answer the following questions:

1) Why Should I Join a church?

2) What is the Purpose of this Church?

3) What Does NRHBC & Cross Church Believe?

4) How Do I Get Involved?

5) And, How Do I Develop Relationships with Others through our Church?

6) How Do I Join North Richland Baptist Church?

The Purpose of this three-week class is to encourage you to become an informed member of North Richland Baptist Church so that you may, in turn, become an involved member of North Richland Baptist Church and Cross Church. As we get started we have placed a “Getting to Know You” form on your chairs. If you haven’t already would you take a few minutes to complete this in order for our church to have a better idea of who you are? In our church, we have a wide assortment of people ranging from “uninvolved church members” to “attenders.”

1. Why Should I Join North Richland Baptist Church?

So many times I have sat and listened to a presentation either in school or in church and wondered, “Why am I here?” “Why does this matter?” Or, “why does this matter to me?” I want to tell in the next few minutes why joining a church is relevant to your life. Or why membership matters.

By joining a church or even your interest in joining a church, you are making an unselfish move in a selfish society. So many people are only interested in themselves. They are only interested in their holy trinity: me, myself, and I. But being a part of a church is much like raising children – it is fundamentally a non-selfish commitment. And that is one of the fundamental beliefs you need to understand about our church (not that our church is perfect). So as a part of our introduction to our church, I am asking many of you to form a new mental category. A category that calls upon you to think of others first before yourself. Again, as a mother would her children. So everyone repeat after me: My Church is not about me, it’s about God. Does that mean you’ll not benefit from this church? Or that we don’t want you to benefit from being a part of this church? Absolutely not. You’ll benefit in tremendously practical ways:

1. Encouragement when you are down;

2. You’ll make new friends;

3. You’ll grow in depth of your understanding of Scripture;

4. You’ll have a new family in times of crisis.

Yet, your happiness and growth and development will only be to the proportion that you invest in God and others: “And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, ‘If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all’” (Mark 9:35).

So with that in mind, I want to give you four reasons why you should join a church. And none of these is about you first and foremost but all of them benefit you tremendously. And they benefit you more than if you just spent a lifetime focusing on what can church do for me.

1.1 Join a Church for God

The church is important because of God.

1.1.1 The church was God’s idea

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

The church is in existence today because Jesus started it.

1.1.2 The New Testament Letters were to Churches and Not Individuals

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 1:1).

1.1.3 Jesus Christ identifies Himself with the Church

It’s interesting if you look through the book of Acts, it is the Lord who adds people to their number and being added to the Christians number meant being identified as the church: “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). “And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women…” (Acts 5:14). And lastly, “And a great many people were added to the Lord” (Acts 11:24).

And who identifies with the church? It is fascinating that when Paul or Saul is on the road to Damascus he has the vision of the risen Christ. He appears to him and Saul falls to the ground. Do you remember what Jesus says to him? “But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me’” (Acts 9:1-4)? He doesn’t say “Saul, Saul, why are going to persecute those Christians”. He doesn’t even say “Saul, Saul, why are you going to persecute the church.” He says, “Saul, Saul, why are you going to persecute me.” Jesus so clearly and closely identifies with the church that he refers to the congregation of Christians as Damascus as “me.” That’s why I think Paul got his image of the church as the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-31).