Church: When the teaching is sound but the fellowship can be better

Over the years online there have been brothers in sisters online who want to find solid sound Bible teaching churches but there’s not much option nearby where they live.  On various social media platforms I have found many of these precious saints and I feel for them and pray for them.  Some of these individuals were previously in churches that can have great programs, and a church that is sociable.  But the importance of the church being sound in doctrine matters.  So these believer leave in search of a church that is Bible preaching and has sound biblical doctrines.

Now I know fellowship and sound teaching shouldn’t be mutually exclusive; and a healthy church would have both; and the relationship of the two would be sound Bible teaching drives the fellowship; that is, sound teaching is the basis of the fellowship.  How?  In the sense of the basis for unity and what is talked about, and sound doctrine is use for encouragement to one another.  But sometimes in our sin effected world, there’s a break and a gap between doctrines and fellowship.

In fact sometimes churches that are weak in doctrines or are not conscious of what the Bible teaches as applied to social interaction can technically be very sociable but the social interaction might not be fellowship or is a weak fellowship, at least in the biblical sense as I described it in the previous paragraph.  I think of when I was in high school showing up at a big church’s youth group and Tuesday night is their “fellowship” night and there was board games, video games and basketball but after a while I asked the youth pastor when does the Bible study start and he said not tonight and with the big youth pastor grin he said “Tonight’s fellowship night!”  There’s places to hang out but if every Tuesday night is that kind of fellowship night actually fellowship?

So there are times God might put two options before an individual and their family: There is a church with sound doctrines but it can improve on the fellowship, or a church with weak doctrines but there’s a lot of socializing/social activity.  Which ones do you pick?

I bring this up because I’m a pastor of a small church.  I think we have sound doctrinal teaching.  (Some of those teachings makes their way into this blog). But we are a small fellowship and with the way things are going economically in my area people have to move further and further away from the area for their job or have somewhere to live that’s reasonable (and I’m not only talking about purchasing a home either).  Fellowship gets harder and then having kids makes it harder still for those who moved away.   Every Sunday I don’t take these individuals for granted who travel so far for the teaching.  In addition we also have a number of special needs and individuals with mental health.  These individuals social interaction are consistent with behavior of those have special needs.  I also think there are also others who are socially awkward.

Among Christians that visit looking for a home church there seems to be two kinds of people who visit the church: Those who show up for God’s Word as the priority, and those that show up for other things besides God’s Word as their priority.  The second group might even agree the preaching of the Bible is important.  But its not their first thing.

The two responses to our church from the two different groups seems to be exactly opposite.  For those who are looking for sound teaching, you can see their joy after the Word has been taught.  Its generally very very encouraging for all of us with these individuals.  For those who are the opposite, who are not there for the Word of God first, there can be a lot of complaining.  Like a lot of complaining.  What’s sad is unchecked complaints often can snowball into unfounded complaints, that are not only inaccurate but very unedifying.  By unfounded I mean that they think our church aren’t doing certain things because they haven’t seen it happened before their very eyes.  For those who are into apologetics, there’s the saying that absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence.  When it comes to church complaining some people can be worst than that: They complained about the church lacking something when its announced regularly at church that we have something for that.  A complaining demeanor often narrows one’s vision to see what God might be doing, even if it is not what one’s expectation might be.

I am not writing this post to say my church doesn’t have issues with being socializing.  I do think we have much to grow with growing in showing care, compassion and reaching out with one another outside of Sunday.  Still I see slow changes that encourages me.  When we first began greeting time during service it was only my wife and I walking to greet and talk to one another.  Over many years that started to change.  And part of that change sometimes was new people who came to the Church wanting to be there for the Word of God to feed their soul, these individuals went out of their comfort zone.  I would not have thought it took that long for that kind of greeting to be normalized.  In fact nothing I do in ministry ever went according to my timetable or time expectation.

But over the years I learned something from that.  Slow changes sometimes reminds us that it was not by our own effort.  It wasn’t just the leaders ingenuity or personality that got it going.  I am convinced slow changes often happen when people finally internalize biblical truths and do things with the biblical motivation; not always, but its less suspect than swift changes, especially when the changes happen because one is following along with what others are doing.  And in a church where the fellowship can be improved I think also when people change sometimes that is more clear its driven by the Word rather than sociological group comformity.  This is not a defense for churches to have weak socializing; this is an observation that God is often working in ways we don’t expect or look for, and also for God to get the glory that any true lasting change really comes from His Word.  As I look back at my life and recall the big campus ministries I was involved with in high school and college I also look back with sadness that some who were active were there with those ministries because there was so many people, because it was a place where things were “happening.”  But I look back and wonder how many followed God after those time with our campus ministries; I really want it that it is God’s Word that change people and that people don’t get confused with group sociological expectation or even groups as a crutch for change, rather than the Word of God itself.  It also makes me think about how God uses loneliness, uses isolation and also use group dynamic where we give more than we receive, of how God uses all that for our spiritual growth.  Too often I think in America people’s model of spiritual growth is there is a small group where they are prized and loved, and valued, and top-down programmed and only then do they think they are growing.  I think New Testament epistles suggests otherwise, through turmoil of a church the Lord is working.  But God’s Word got to be front and central, the beacon of the Gospel and Christ being preached.