Have You Ever Wondered ...

... Which Church Is Right for You?

There are many churches around

Perhaps you’ve been a member in one congregation for a long time but are now searching for a new church home. Perhaps you’ve been “church shopping” because you moved into a new area.

What kind of church have you been looking for? Maybe you’ve been looking for a church where you can meet friendly people who are like you: same age, with children or without, same hobbies, same musical tastes, and so forth. Maybe you’ve been looking for a church where you can offer your talents in serving the Lord, a church that inspires you to grow on your faith-journey. Or maybe you’ve been looking for a church that meets your needs for energizing worship or for worthwhile programs and a safe place for your children.

These are certainly all very understandable, even important needs – human and spiritual. We want to be around people who are like us and whom we like. We want to be sure that our children are cared for in a helpful way and in a nurturing and safe environment. And certainly we want to participate in relevant worship and use our talents to serve our Lord Jesus as best as we can.

As you have traveled around and checked out various churches, you have certainly found that different congregations meet all, some, or none of those needs of yours. Is therefore that church right for you that meets most of your needs?

What is Christ’s church all about?

Jesus Christ established the church on earth. In his Word, the Bible, he has clearly set forth what his church is to be all about. In other words, Jesus has defined what needs the church is sent to meet. That doesn’t mean that other needs are “bad” or, at least, unimportant. But it does mean that certain needs are best met at other places and institutions, lest the mission of Christ’s church in the world become obscured and compromised by other purposes and activities.

What, then, is Christ’s church all about? Simply put, Christ’s church is about two specific and highly important things: It is about man’s sin and God’s forgiveness of that sin because of Jesus Christ. In other words, church is all about the biggest need sinful people like us have.

This is seen most clearly when Christ, after his resurrection, commissioned his followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Christ also clearly stated how the church is to do that, namely, “by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and by teaching them everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

We’ve said that the church is all about our sin and God’s forgiveness of that sin. This is so because Christ sent his disciples out to baptize and to teach. Baptism, you see, is all about our sin and God’s forgiveness. In Acts 2:38 people are told to repent of (that is, to acknowledge and confess) their sins and “be baptized for the remission of sins.” Ephesians 5:26 teaches us that Christ’s life and death had the purpose to “cleanse [the church] with the washing of water by the word.” In other words, when we today are baptized according to Christ’s institution, then all our sins are actually washed away, that is, forgiven for Christ’s sake. This is why Titus 3:5 teaches that we are saved by God’s mercy through baptism (see also 1 Peter 3:21).

The same is true for the kind of teaching Jesus commanded his disciples. “Teaching” here is not chiefly the conveying of information, even though that also plays a very important part. The teaching Jesus has in mind here is to uncover and meet man’s greatest need, which is not simply ignorance but sin and its forgiveness. The teaching Jesus commissions here, therefore, is to take place in terms of “law and gospel.” This is to say that the disciples are first to speak God’s law and then God’s gospel. Both teach us very important things we don’t know otherwise.

God’s law, the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3-17), shows us our sin and thus lets us feel that without faith in Christ we are indeed lost and subject to God’s eternal wrath (see Ephesians 2:1-3). In this way, the law gives us repentance, that is, it causes us to admit our sin and be sorry about it. In other words, the law first shows us what man’s greatest need is: forgiveness of sins.

The gospel, on the other hand, shows us that Christ took all our sin upon himself and destroyed it once for all on the cross: Because of him, we are forgiven all our sins. Indeed, we are declared innocent, righteous, and holy before God. We are saved. (See Romans 3:21-26, 28.) In this way, the gospel causes us to believe in Christ and the forgiveness and salvation that is ours because of him. In other words, the gospel meets our greatest need.

After his resurrection, Christ explained to his disciples that law and gospel, that is, “repentance and remission of sins, should be preached in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47). In fact, in Acts 5:31 we learn that it is the risen and exalted Jesus himself who has promised to give “repentance and remission of sins” through the preaching of the church.

To summarize: The church Jesus Christ established is about baptizing and preaching God’s law and gospel. This is how the church of Jesus Christ uncovers and meets a very specific and crucial need of everybody: our need for forgiveness of sins and salvation from God’s wrath.

This is confirmed by the fact that the other “sacrament” Christ instituted before returning to the Father, the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion (see 1 Corinthians 11:24-26), also is about our sin and God’s forgiveness. Its gospel-words proclaim to us that Christ gave his body, and shed his blood, “for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). On top of that, this sacrament also seals the gospel to each partaker individually by giving to each Christ’s very own body and blood (see Matthew 26:26, 28). These are the very means by which Christ earned our forgiveness on the cross.

But is that all?

You might feel this is a bit too narrow: Didn’t Jesus and his disciples also perform miracles to meet the people’s bodily needs of healing and nourishment? Didn’t Jesus also command his disciples to love one another? And: Isn’t forgiveness a one-time event at the beginning of our Christian lives? In other words, shouldn’t the church be mainly about meeting people’s physical needs and loving service?

Jesus and his apostles performed their miracles to show that they were sent by the one true God (see Acts 2:22; Hebrews 2:3-4). Their primary purpose was not simply to meet people’s physical needs.

To be sure, the one true God is also the one who created us, soul and body. For Christ’s sake, he does give us daily bread, that is, all the things that we need for our bodily lives. Indeed, as God’s children every Christian does have the duty to share with all in need what God has given him. We do that in and through the vocations or “callings in life” we have: e.g., as parents by feeding our children; as farmers by growing corn and raising cattle; as doctors by healing the sick.

These bodily needs are important. And yet, Christ did not send his disciples to feed every hungry person they met but to preach the gospel to all creatures (Mark 16:15).

The same can be said about other works of love and service: in the context of our daily vocations every Christian is called to love and serve his neighbor according to God’s law, the Ten Commandments, as best as he can. But this, again, is not the specific service, “mission,” assigned to the church by Jesus.

The church’s duty and mission is, and remains, to baptize, to teach God’s law and gospel, and to give the Lord’s Supper. The church is sent to forgive sins (see John 20:22-23). This special service you can get nowhere else but at church. This is indeed good news because, according to God’s Word, sin and forgiveness (and the ensuing battle against sin in us) remain our main concerns as long as we live on earth (see Romans 6:12-23; Galatians 5:18; 1 John 1:8-10). And once the need for salvation is met God’s way, then the other things we need will be provided as well (see Matthew 6:33). In fact, we will also realize that the importance of those “other things” pales in comparison to the “one thing needful” (see Luke 10:42; 1 Timothy 6:6-8).

Summary

So which church is right for you? Simply put, the church that does what Jesus wants it to do to meet mankind’s greatest and most serious need, the need of forgiveness and eternal salvation. Only in such a church you can be sure that your most serious need doesn’t get lost among many other activities but is being met on a regular, reliable basis. In other words, Christ wants you to look for a church that faithfully baptizes and gives the Lord’s Supper according to his institution and that faithfully teaches everything that he has commanded his apostles, both God’s law and gospel.

God’s biblical Word is the only reliable compass to lead you to such a church that teaches Christ’s teachings as they are recorded in God’s Word, the Holy Scriptures themselves. As the apostle John writes in the fourth chapter of his First Letter (verses 1 and 6): “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. … We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”

If you wonder whether Trinity Lutheran Church in Carver is a church that is right for you, get in touch with me (by phone or e-mail), come to our services, and test our teachings by God’s Word to see whether we offer that “one thing needful.” May God bless your search for the right church.

Pastor Holger Sonntag