The Bible pictures church like a family, and Christians are adopted into that family when we are born again in Christ. That family is, first and foremost, a global or universal family, consisting of all Christians everywhere. All Christians are now fellow citizens and members of God’s household (Eph. 2:19). We are even called members of Christ’s family — siblings, as it were (Mark 3:33-35, Ro. 8:29, etc.). However, we are also called to belong to a local community of believers, a local church. Today, I want to talk about what that means and how I got it wrong for some years.

When I became a Christian, I early learned what I might call a “committed view of church”, but I believe I got the heart of the matter wrong. My church taught, and I believe, that many people are far too quick to leave churches for a wide variety of reasons. Perhaps someone offends them, or the preaching hurts their feelings or cuts too close to home, or maybe it’s not encouraging enough. Perhaps they leave because the style of worship changes and they no longer enjoy it, or because the church gets too large, or too small, or they just don’t feel like they belong. Perhaps they have a conflict with another member, or one of the leaders, and it just doesn’t seem possible to stay in the same place after being so hurt. Regardless, for some reason or combination of reasons, they eventually decide they would be better off starting fresh somewhere else, and, so, off they go. Well, I was taught was that this was wrong — that the Bible wants us to be committed to a local church, to see Church as family, or nearly so, and stay committed to it regardless of problems except in certain very extreme cases. One might be justified in leaving a church, I believed, if the teaching becomes unbiblical or in a handful of other cases, but otherwise, we ought to stay committed to our local church. Church hopping because a church doesn’t “meet my needs” or because I’m just not enjoying it, well, that would displease God, I thought, so I just didn’t even consider doing so.

I believed this, and I still do, but I missed out on why commitment is so important and, in so doing, I missed part of God’s heart for me in church membership. I wanted to stay committed to my church because God commanded me to do so, and leaving would displease him. And that was it. I didn’t understand the positive aspect of commitment. Why is it so important to be committed to a local church? I just didn’t ask that, or try to figure out how this might be part of God’s particular plan for my growth.

A few years ago, around 2015, after about three years of membership in our current church, I was really struggling. I was starting to see flaws, weaknesses, and areas where my church needed growth and major change, and experiencing real frustration with the pace of change. I still believed commitment to church was important, so I wasn’t really thinking about leaving, but I had a great deal of discontent. But around that same time, we had a speaker at our church retreat (Pastor Richard Kim, I believe) who dealt specifically with the issue of commitment to church, and through this I began to see the positive aspects of commitment clearly.

I want to turn to marriage for a moment, and explain how God used marriage to help me grow, because that helps me see this positive aspect of church commitment more clearly too. I hope it will do the same for you.

When Maura and I got married, we fought almost all the time at first, probably for most of the first year. It was a rough time, and not one I would care to repeat. Through marriage, and this conflict, God brought me face to face with my own sin — sin I had been unaware of — and showed me how serious it was. It was serious enough that, if I didn’t repent, it would destroy my marriage and hurt my wife. This led me to repent. God used my marital conflict to bring me to recognize, repent of, and begin to overcome my sin. I doubt I would have seen my sin, or been willing to change, without this conflict turning my sin into a major problem. God uses marriage to bring us to change and grow in ways we wouldn’t have otherwise, or at least he did for me. It wouldn’t have done this if marriage weren’t a permanent relationship. Instead of working out my problems with Maura and, ultimately, repenting of my sin, I could have simply fled our marriage and its associated conflict. But now, looking back, I see clearly how much I’ve benefitted from and grown from our marriage, and even from that early conflict.

Well, our church retreat speaker helped me see that God intends our relationship with our local church to produce similar benefits. It’s precisely the conflicts and difficulties which bring my sin to the forefront and highlight areas where I need to grow and change, just as was the case in marriage. If I leave the church because it bothers me, or I have problems with the people in it, I won’t grow and change in the ways God wants me to.

I also realized that, while I’d remained in my church, I hadn’t benefitted as much as God wanted me to partly because of how I responded when facing conflict. Sure, I didn’t leave the church when I faced conflict, but sometimes I pulled back. If I had a conflict with someone, sometimes I would try to avoid them, or not interact with them much. I’d just resign myself to the reality that we don’t see eye to eye and leave it at that. I suppose the marital analogy would be just avoiding certain topics with my wife, or maybe even avoiding talking to her at all. Sure, there would be less conflict, but the marriage wouldn’t be what God intended, and I wouldn’t grow.

The Proverbs speak of how “Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another.” (Prov. 27:17) Growth in holiness is often pictured as being “refined”, as metal is purified and refined in a furnace. Growth in holiness thus involves some pain and, I believe, difficulties and conflicts we have in church provide part of this in much the same way that marriage can. It’s these conflicts and problems which bring us to examine our hearts, our attitudes, our reactions, and how we treat others and see ways in which we fall short, so we can repent and change.

Our speaker pointed out that, in our society, people spend on average 3-5 years in a church before moving to another. It often takes that long to really get to know a church, see its flaws, and be deeply hurt by the people in the church. That’s an opportunity to love and forgive, and God calls us to submit to Him by doing so, our speaker argued. He said, roughly speaking, “You don’t [submit to God] by loving the people you choose, but by loving the people He chooses for you.” So, he argued, loving the people of our church and working through our problems is part of our submission to God and our trust in his sovereignty. This stuck with me. Do I really believe God is sovereign, enough so that even the flawed people around me are chosen by him to be in my life for my benefit? The Bible says they are (Ro. 8:28). God is faithful and trustworthy, so we can trust Him even with respect to our church.

We’re told that one of the distinguishing marks of Christianity is love for other believers (e.g. 1 John 2:9-11), and our speaker pointed out how we often pray and ask God to help us to be more loving and trust him more. Well, the person we have the hardest time loving is there in the church because of God’s will, he said. In bringing that difficulty, and that person, God is answering our prayers. This was very challenging because if it is right — and I believe it is — then when I was avoiding people who were hard for me to love, I was fleeing God’s answers to my prayers.

This idea reshaped my view of church, and continues to do so. I no longer see church membership as something I’m just called to, but something God intends for my benefit in much the same way He wants me to benefit. I’m more aware of the positive aspects of church membership. I’ve also tried to mend some broken relationships I had in the church, and to change my attitude towards folks who rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve grown, and am growing, to be more understanding of people in the church who are very different from me and who have a very different approach, and recognize that God has things he wants me to learn from them, too.

So, let’s not be people who are always evaluating our churches to see whether we’re getting good value out of them, like we do with a Costco membership or similar. Let’s be committed, even when that means we have to deal with conflict and people in the church really bother us. Let’s trust God even with respect to who is in our church and what problems it has, and let’s see how God wants to grow us through these difficulties.

I want to be clear, though, I’m not saying there are never good reasons to leave a church. If your church begins denying the clear teaching of Scripture and continues to do so even after it is brought to their attention, it may be time to leave. Or if the church is abusive, or tolerates serious sin from the leaders, those may also be reasons to leave. The truth of the gospel comes first. However, remember that as Americans, we tend to be very individualistic, and we may be too quick to see leaving a church as the best solution, when there may be other possible solutions. Also, God intends for us to have problems and difficulties in our churches, and he intends to use those to help us grow. Let’s recognize that, and benefit from such problems and difficulties, rather than pulling back from our churches when we encounter them or, worse, simply leaving and starting over somewhere else.