Why You Should Commit To One Church
Posted: Monday, April 27, 2009
by Abigail Richards
Study after study shows that Americans switch faiths early and often. A new survey released today states that half of all Americans change churches once in their lifetimes.
The survey found that while Catholics leave the church because of disagreements with church teachings, protestants switch affiliations because of life changes.
In the middle of all the church switching, the number of unaffiliated individuals is growing because of general distrust and disenchantment with church leaders.
We recently became one of those statistics. We left a church in which my husband grew up at and our whole family had attended for the last ten years.
We left for several reasons including the disenchantment found in the study. It would have been easy to not go back to church, but worshiping in a corporate setting is beneficial for many reasons.
Here are a few of the reasons it is essential to find a church and commit to one church.
It is Biblical to commit to one church. Christ is committed to the church.
"Christ loved the church and he gave his life for it." –Ephesians 5:25
"Let us not give up the habit of meeting together-but let us encourage one another." –Hebrews 10:25
"They worshipped together regularly at the Temple each day, met in small groups in homes for Communion, and shared their meals with great joy and thankfulness." –Acts 2:46
A second reason to commit to one church is personal. It produces spiritual growth. Accountability is key for spiritual growth. When you move from church family to family, there is no accountability.
A third reason is a cultural reason. We live in a society in which few want to be committed. This is where the problem of church hopping has developed. We have become a generation unable to commit to a specific religion. Committing builds character and is an unselfish decision. Christ wants us to be connected to other Christians.
Finally, committing to one church is essential on a practical level. Imagine if you were a member of a baseball team, but at each game you played with different players. Do you think you would have many wins? The same is true with churches. If the members are constantly coming and going, then what kind of impact are you able to have on the community or world? Churches are suppose to be families who work together to build Christ's kingdom and do His work. If the members of the team continually change, how well is the work getting done?
These are just a few thoughts to ponder on the effect of church switching on society. Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Not so much disagreement with the above, but trying to see the flipside.
Yes Christ loved the church, but doesn't that apply to the church universal, his bride, which is more than just the local fellowship to which one may belong?
I agree that you should be committed to serving god locally to where you live, and affiliating to a church is a great way to grow, have fellowship, and use the combined resources of a group (not just fiscal, but spiritual too; prayer for example) to strive to achieve greater than you could as individuals. My fear however, as I have seen in my life is that churches can become very insular, almost the I'm for Paul/I'm for apollos but instead, I'm for the baptist whilst your for the Methodist.
Churches need to come together more. Rather than focusing on our differences, we should be showing Christ through our unity and that means more than just the 80 or so people we know at our church.
This is a bit waffly, sorry! I'm just annoyed at how some churches put commitment to that church and it's services so high on it's priorities that it becomes legalistic and reminds me if certain people Christ rebuked.
I see where you're coming from. I also used to think that I saw a lot of the "I'm for Paul/Apollos" legalism of the church, and therefore I talked myself out of being completely committed to a single church. But I finally found a church that makes me want to be committed. I instantly started attending every event/bible study they had, and they also have a thing called "home groups" where we're all separated into different homes and meet weekly for a meal and bible study. I started getting very irritated because I was seeing a lot of disconnect among our groups. I felt like I wasn't able to get to know people in the other home groups and we were all very much our own cliques. But that was entirely untrue. I was still looking at things through a worldly perspective. God gave us the church and the individuals in the church for our encouragement. We desperately need that fellowship, and homegroups are a great way of minimizing the huge crowd and getting ot the deeper discussions. I can easily get to know anyone else if from the other homegroups if I wanted. God really broke down a lot of my legalism, and now I'm understanding the importance of commitment. I have no right to make religion suitable to my own personal desires (i.e. I'll go to this church this time/I'll make it to bible study next week when I'm not swamped with work/I'm not in the spiritual mood and won't get anything out of the sermon anyways so I'm not gonna go). We are there for each other, and in turn we are there for our own benefit. Sure there may be legalistic churches out there, but I feel that a lot of the time it's actually just what we want to think is going on in the church because subconsciously (or consciously) we don't want to be forced to be committed. I think my thoughts may be just as "waffly"! Hope some of that makes sense :)
Outstanding. I have been teaching and preaching this and peoples response is usually to "moralize" the subject. "Am I sinning by going to multiple churches?" Just become something is not a sin it does not mean is what is best. Opting out of attending university or a trade school is not a sin but that doesn't mean it is good for your future. Church is not a product to be consumed, it is a the family of Christ. Christian families spiritually emancipate themselves because they are quitters. It's easier to quit than it is to persevere. James 1:2-4.
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