Why live out faith with a local church?

An understandable reluctance

“I believe in God, but I don’t need an institution.” It is a very common sentence, and it often comes from a good reason: a hurtful experience, a scandal, boredom, the feeling of playing a part.

Those reasons deserve to be taken seriously before anything is argued.

What you lose on your own

• The person who contradicts you. A faith with nobody to question it quickly becomes a reflection of our own preferences. You end up with a God who thinks exactly as you do.
• Endurance. Solitary convictions erode. Not all at once — slowly, until they weigh nothing.
• The concrete. Love of neighbour stays an idea until the day the neighbour has a name, a difficult temperament and needs a lift to an appointment.
• Support. Nobody notices when you disappear for three months.

The New Testament, for its part, knows no isolated Christian. It speaks constantly of a body with different, interdependent members (1 Corinthians 12), of people who bear with one another, forgive one another and encourage one another. That body has a head, and it is no human leader: it is Christ himself (Colossians 1:18).

The very first community fits in one sentence: they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer (Acts 2:42). Twenty centuries later, that is still the shortest description of what a church is meant to do. And its purpose does not stop at itself: to display the kingdom of God, to love him, to make disciples, to proclaim the gospel — and, in due time, to help other communities begin.

What a church should be

Not a show to consume. Not a club of people who resemble each other. A place where you can arrive as you are, say that you doubt, and be known.

Marks of a healthy community:

• You can ask an uncomfortable question there without the looks changing.
• Leaders are accountable; nobody is untouchable.
• The money is transparent.
• Vulnerable people are protected there, not exposed.
• The neighbourhood is served without counting the returns.

If that is not what you have known, it was no reason to stay.

Big or small?

It does not matter. In the Projet Acadie network, some communities are established churches with a building and a pastor; others are a dozen people around a table, in a home, with a meal and an open Bible.

Both count. What makes a church is not a building: it is people gathering around Jesus and taking care of one another.

How to go about it

• Come and see, with no commitment. Nobody will ask anything of you.
• Give it three visits before judging. A first time is always strange.
• Say that you are new. It shortens a great many things.
• Watch how the people are treated who bring nothing to anybody. That is the most reliable test.

The network map will show you what exists near you. And if you would rather begin by writing to someone than by walking into an unfamiliar room, that is perfectly legitimate: write to us and we will reply.