Devoted to God’s Church
Until the 1900s, no one had ever written a biblical defense of church membership. To be a Christian was to be a church member. Or we can say, to be devoted to God naturally led to being devoted to God’s church. However, the incipient individualism of the 1970s reached peak maturity in our post-CoVid world where live-streaming alone has replaced doing church together. Sinclair Ferguson provides for us a helpful corrective by reminding us that “believing also involves belonging,” and belonging serves to strengthen our believing.
Devoted to God’s Church can be easily summarized in three sections - the church, her members, and her activity. The entire direction of the book springs from that very first section. Our common understanding of the church is one of a voluntary society like the Raymond Garden Club or a local Rotary Club. How far this is from the truth! The church is a body, a family composed by Christ and consisting of all those who confess faith in Him. However, Ferguson notes that the attendance policy and expectations are more scrupulously maintained by both the voluntary societies and her members! For some reason, we have come to believe that the church demands less of us, that the world is free to ask much more. Being a member of Christ’s glorious church is a far higher privilege than any other membership, but it also demands far more of us. The joy of believing in Christ carries with it the responsibility of belonging to Christ.
As Ferguson transitions to the activity of the church, he addresses reading Scripture, prayer, worship, and sacraments. But two stand out for me - service and mission. Drawing upon the washing of the disciples’ feet (John 13) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28), Christ models to us the necessity of service at home and abroad. As someone who loves the NBA, I have noticed that even injured players must come to every game. Every player may not be on the court, but every player has a role - coaching, supporting, encouraging, and even cleaning. A member of God’s church who sits in the stands is one who is derelict in their duty. To serve may be to refill a cup of coffee, to commit oneself to prayer for a particular missionary, to counsel and encourage - each come with their own joy with the promise of more. Church is not an optional dessert, with service and missions as the cherry on top. A more apt illustration would be to see church as our calendar with service and missions making up the details.
Written to encourage and enflame a devotion to God’s church in the average person, there could be no better book written today to recalibrate our priorities and plans than Devoted to God’s Church. I would encourage you all to purchase a copy here, and let us apply these “core values for Christian fellowship” to our own dear church.
