In 1994, a couple years after it was published, and before I had really done any intentional, theological thinking, a friend gave me Chuck Colson’s book, Being the Body. It is a book about the church. He described the church as a “new community” – and this was new to me. Colson wrote: 

Yet according to Scripture, Christianity is corporate. This is why we speak of the body with its different parts, the community of the redeemed, the holy nation and royal priesthood—or, as Carl Henry calls it, “the new society of God’s people, the new society of the twice-born.” 

By God’s grace, I eventually became a part of this “new society of God’s people”—and my life changed. I gathered and prayed and sang and listened to the Word in the context of a local church. I experienced deep relationships, sincere friendships, and spiritual growth. When I went to seminary for a few years, I found another church, got plugged in, and pursued a similar course of Christian maturation rooted in a local church body.

Through the good teaching I received and a phenomenal outpouring of God’s grace, my wife and I can’t think of Christianity without thinking about the local church. It is not a side dish that complements the entrée; the body of Christ is at the center of our walk with the Lord. Like mountain peaks soaring over a  valley, the historic marks of the church loom large in our lives. 

The preaching of the Word is part of our weekly routine and has been for almost fourteen years of marriage. I have learned Scripture and grown to love Scripture in the context of local churches that take it seriously. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper and baptism remain a highlight of our lives. The constant call to self-reflection demanded by the Lord’s Supper, the constant reminder of our own conversion demanded by baptism are visible reminders of God’s grace. All these “events” which take place in the context of local church relationships have become the tablecloth upon which the rest of our life is set. Why do so many Christians neglect the church? 

Now I am a pastor and my life is unusually centered around a local church. Now I’m being paid to be a part of a local church. I pray that the requirement that I be part of a church never dulls the joy I feel at being a member of the body of Christ. 

The church I serve is possible not because the church will never change but because the gospel will never change. Brian McLaren argued that because communities of faith reach out to new cultures, the gospel must change (McLaren, “The Method, the Message, and the Ongoing Story,” in The Church in Emerging Culture; Five Perspectives, 2003, 206). I disagree. The reason I am a Christian, the reason I am a pastor is because the gospel does not change. 

There is so much talk about the church today. Church growth has been replaced by church innovation. Community has been replaced by authenticity. The mega church has been replaced by the multi-site campus.  Much of this talk is centered around the need for the church to change. Perhaps. I certainly appreciate innovation (as I type this on a laptop computer). Furthermore, I realize that tradition is often merely the innovations of a bygone era. 

Nonetheless, as a pastor I don’t want to spend my time looking for a new gospel that better reaches the culture. Nor do I want to look for the latest innovation to make the church I serve more relevant to the culture. I want to crisply, freshly, truthfully, spiritually, and powerfully apply God’s Word to the church and the culture. My prayer the first day of my ministry here in Atlanta and my prayer over a year into it remains the same: “Lord, help me trust that your Word will build your church.”