Taking that interstate job...what about your home church?
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via WikipediaToo often, it’s easy to make life’s “big decisions” just like a non-Christian would, giving no regard to how it will impact our membership in our local churches. We consider a job offer in another city with scant regard for whether that city has a healthy church. We consider a possible marriage partner without asking whether the person has a track record of loving and serving Christ’s body.Let me look at the matter another way. We fail, when confronted with such decisions, to seek counsel from the brothers and sisters in our congregations who know us well — often because we have not sought meaningful relationships in the first place.
We don’t consider the impact our going will have on others — the children we’ve been teaching in Sunday school or the fellow people who depend on our weekly encouragement.
We face many difficult decisions about how to raise our children: Am I disciplining too much? Not enough? Should we home school? Public school? But we do not avail ourselves of older and wiser parents in the congregation.
You get the picture. If you are a Christian, it’s worth asking whether you include your church in your life planning. I mean “include the church” in two ways: do you consider it as a factor in your thinking, and do you actually involve the people in your decision making?
God has given all of us a wonderful gift in other Christians who have weaknesses and strengths, talents and resources, that complement our own. Whatever gift we have, we have it for the common good (1 Cor. 12:7; 1 Peter 4:10). We’re to build one another up to maturity (Eph. 4:13; 1 Thess. 5:11;Jude 20–21). Maturity in Christ is a group project, which is why our discipleship should occur primarily in and through the local church. Christian love and obedience put on flesh there.
For instance, Philippians 2:1–11 says to “consider others better than [ourselves]” and to “look to the interests of others.” Then it tells us to have the same attitude as Christ, who became man, made Himself a servant, and went to die on the cross. Let me see if I can apply these verses by fleshing out one example of a big life decision: which home to buy or apartment to rent.
If you are able, “consider others better than yourselves” and “look to the interests of others” by living geographically close to the church. When a person lives within walking distance of a church or clumps of members, it is easier to invite people to one’s house for dinner, to watch one another’s children while running errands, and to pick up bread or milk at the store for one another. In other words, it is just plain easier to integrate daily life when there is relative — even walkable — geographic proximity.
When choosing a place to live, Christians do well to ask some of the same questions that non-Christians ask: What are the costs? Are there good schools nearby? But a Christian also does well to ask additional questions like these: Will the mortgage or rent payment allow for generosity to others? Will it give other church members quick access to me for discipleship and hospitality?
