Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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The One True Church
Chapter 2 – My Experiences as an Adult Church Member
My earliest experiences with church had been as a minor. I was not the one making the decisions about how involved I should be. As a newly-minted believer in Jesus and the Bible, however, I was an adult making adult decisions. The first decision I had to make was which church to attend.
You’d think I would join the church to which my high-school classmate belonged. But he did not push me to do so. Moreover, he left his job as a claims adjuster to pursue an academic degree in Christian psychology in another city right after my conversion – so our communications from that point onward were limited.
I never considered going back to the Roman Catholic Church. They had me the first dozen years of my life and never taught me about a personal relationship with Jesus. For them, it was all about a corporate relationship with the church. It was as if the Roman Catholic Church was saying, “We are the way, the truth, and the life – no one comes to Jesus except through us.” A Protestant church could claim to be better than all other churches, but none of them dared say, “We are the one true church.”
My wife had been raised Episcopalian, and it was Protestant – so we decided to try that church first. On the Sunday we went, they happened to be starting some Sunday School classes for adults. We chose the one titled “Getting Comfortable with the Bible.” That a sounded perfect for us. Unfortunately, the woman who taught the class never opened the Bible during our first hour-long session. She talked about her Bible, praised it, showed us how well-worn hers was – but didn’t read a single word from it. We started looking for another church right away.
By most counts, there are over 30,000 Christian denominations. My wife and I, like it or not, were church shopping. We tried a Lutheran church. Then a Presbyterian Church. I met with a pastor or two. I wasn’t finding anything in the Bible to help me with the process because they didn’t have denominations in biblical times.
It turns out that church shopping is commonplace among modern Christians – and not just among new ones. According to statistics, a church with a stable membership of 200 over a five-year period is constantly experiencing turnover – losing and gaining roughly 30 to 40 people every single year.
I remember receiving the following advice during our search for a church home: “Don’t look for the perfect church…because you’ll never find it; and if you do find it, don’t join it – because you’ll ruin it.” This was sage advice – even though it subtly reminded us that church in modern times was very different from the church we read about in the New Testament. Not that the New Testament church was perfect – but the apostles kept it in an order that we do not see today.
Within a few months we found a church that seemed to be a good fit for our family. It was a suburban church that was populated by residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. The people there talked about Jesus and were constantly referring to the Bible.
Contrary to the sage advice I mentioned above, we actually thought this church was perfect – but something happened before we had a chance to find out that it wasn’t.
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