The following blogpost is written by Trevor King, one of our covenant members and growth group leaders at Imago Dei Church.
LIFE IN COMMUNITY: SHIFTING MY VIEW OF THE CHURCH
We’ve been called a cult.
It’s true, we have. But, first, let me back up…
I moved to North Carolina nearly two years ago. I came for school, to pursue theological education at seminary. I figured two or three years and then I’d move on. Get in and get out and get on with ministry in some position at a church (or with a church – I’ll get to this in a minute). I knew I needed to be a part of a church while I was here. I was committed to finding a body to plug into while being in school – a place (or people – again, I’ll get to this) that I would move on from in a couple of years. I needed a church, but school was the priority and everything would be used to serve that end.
So I moved and spent the first few months looking around. There are good churches. There are wonderful people who make up those churches. But I struggled to find the church that “fit.” I’ve grown to dislike this phrase when it comes to churches. Perhaps you will understand why in the end.
Then one day I reluctantly attended worship with a new church plant in the area. They had been meeting corporately for about two months when I went for the first time. Despite my reluctance, it felt like home – which was strange because it was a far cry from any kind of church I had been with before. And while I know this church isn’t entirely unique, it was unique to my experience.
So I went. I went every week they gathered. I attended a small group every week. I began to form relationships with people. I went through the process of becoming a member. And, most importantly of all, I began to listen.
I began to hear things about the church I had never heard before. I began to grasp Scriptures like Titus 2:14, “He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for Himself a special people, eager to do good works.” I realized that we are not saved in isolation, but we are saved from isolation into a people. I saw the picture of Acts 2 – of how the early church had no buildings or budgets. They were brought together in their devotion to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.
And I heard again and again a simple and profound truth: The church is not something we do or somewhere we go, the church is something we are. Christ has bought a people – a community – with his blood. The church is family. I don’t mean in a poetic or abstract sense; I mean in a literal sense. We are a people connected by blood. Even Matthew notes this at the end of his gospel: “But He [Jesus] replied to the one who told Him, ‘Who is my mother and who are My brothers?’ And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, ‘Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven, that person is My brother and sister and mother,’” (Matthew 12:48-50).
The church is a family that goes deeper than our earthly families. It is an eternal family connected through the blood of our Savior and King. And as family, we live our lives in community. But this isn’t a superficial community where just have many friends. This is deep community – marked by the very things the early church was marked by: belonging and accountability, unity, radical care for one another, worship of Jesus, and thankfulness for God’s grace. In this family, the common thing that binds us is deeper than biology. What binds us is spiritual, at the very core of who and what we are. What binds us together is genuine and life-changing love for Jesus.
And as part of His family, we live with accountability. We live in openness and transparency. We live in radical love and care for the family. And we live with a view of the church as more important than ourselves.
This is where my priorities began to shift. As God began to help me understand the church in this way, I realized that the church we commit to is more important than the job we have, the place we live, or how “fed” we feel we will may be. We commit to a people – to a family.
And so I stay in North Carolina – not only until I finish school and leave, but until God and the family he has put me in calls me elsewhere.
This church isn’t perfect. But no family is. And that’s the point: God’s grace saves people from sin and death and into community. We were outcasts and now we are brought in. We were orphans and now we are adopted. We were alone and now we will never be alone again. We have Christ, and we have His church.
This has been a giant shift in how I’ve previously viewed the church. And it’s different from how most people view the church. This is why we’ve jokingly been referred to as a cult (at least, I hope it’s all been in jest). But we see that the Scriptures point to this view of the church. We see a family redeemed by Christ, brought together to make much of His name to one another and to the world around us.
My prayer for you is a higher view of the church. That you see the church as the family that it is – not figuratively, but literally. And that you and I would give ourselves sacrificially to this people with deep thankfulness to the One who died and rose again to bring this family together.