I hear many say that as long as they believe in God, they are good to go. That going to church is not that important. While church attendance is not a prerequisite to salvation, your belief in Christ is, I fully believe that finding a local church is important to every Christians life. One can only learn this when one experiences a real church family.
Our family has been to a few churches since Carolyn and I got married. One was the church I grew up in. But that was short-lived as it was no longer the right fit. We didn’t begin to attend church again until we moved to Temecula. That church was larger and established to the point where we felt lost in the crowd. I don’t even remember meeting the Pastor, nor did we become involved.
When we moved to Texas, we didn’t attend until we started, again, at a larger church and, again, were lost in the shuffle. I shook the Pastor’s hand a couple of times when exiting the building, but really didn’t feel connected to the church. Then came an invite from a customer of Carolyn’s that would change our lives.
We began to attend First Baptist Church Charlotte in 2019, about a year and a half after Audrey was born. We felt like family after our first visit. The Pastor greeted us with a warm smile, the other members were open arms and even took us to lunch. For the first time, we felt welcome. Here we are fourteen years later firmly planted.
One real experience was when our Pastor and his wife visited us at the hospital when Matthew was getting stitches after a fence-hopping incident. They brought hot coffee and stayed with us. More recently they visited us at the hospital when Chris got into an accident, then with me on Monday when I had my surgery. They have been to football games, graduations, and other memorable moments.
A church is not only about a building we go to to learn about God and celebrate what He’s done for us. The church is the people it is comprised of. There is so much more that I haven’t gotten into that we’ve experienced in our years attending. Many of you already know that Carolyn and I are Sunday School teachers, and we enjoy building into the next generation the love God gives as well as the support our church provides.
If you believe you can get by on your own in your walk with Christ, I encourage you to find a local church to invest your life in. True, you don’t need a church to be saved, but when times get tough, when you need someone to lean on or to celebrate with, or you just feel lost, a local church is the place to be. God bless you, friends. I hope you are encouraged this week.
“For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 12:12
Moments for the Heart 