Chapter One — The Answer Before the Question (1 of 2)

"Now this is eternal life—that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent."
— John 17:3 (NET)

You are not a bad person for asking. Start there.

A believer who loses sleep over a church has not stopped caring about the church. People who never ask whether they belong where they are have often stopped paying attention. The question is serious, and you are allowed to ask it.

But it is not the first question. And it should not be asked as if it were.

Before you ever asked where to worship, God had already said what He wanted. Paul puts it this way: "he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He did this by predestining us to adoption as his legal heirs through Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 1:4–5, NET).

Adoption. Heirs. A Father and His children.

A companion essay, The Upper Room, says it in four words: God wanted a family. John, whom the church has long known as the disciple who leaned on Jesus at the supper, wrote it this way:

"See what sort of love the Father has given to us: that we should be called God's children—and indeed we are!"
— 1 John 3:1 (NET)

And indeed we are. That is the answer before the question.

You did not earn your place in God's family by choosing well. You were called into it by grace. The great traditions of the church differ on how a person is joined to that family, through faith, through baptism, through the Church, and Chapter Four lets each of them say so in its own words.

Some say more. The Catholic Church teaches that those who, knowing the Church to be necessary, refuse to remain in it "could not be saved," and Chapter Four gives its words in full. If that is your Church, take it seriously, and take it to a priest.

But none of the traditions teaches that you earn the Father's love by picking the right congregation.

This matters for everything that follows. A person who treats the church question as the way to win God's favor will be crushed by it, because no church can carry that weight. A person who knows he has already been received can ask the question with open hands.

Jesus named that posture first of all: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them" (Matthew 5:3, NET). The beggar at the gate is not shopping. He is grateful for a seat at the table, and humble about which seat he is given.

Humility about a seat is never consent to harm at the table. If that is your church, go to Chapter Two.

So hold the question inside the answer. Then ask it honestly.

People come to this door by many roads.

Some have moved. Some have married into another tradition, or out of a marriage. Some watched their church change until they did not recognize it. Some read their way into convictions their church does not share. Some are tired of the same faces and the same songs. Some are lonely in a crowd of three hundred.

Some have been wounded. A few are in danger.

And some are not thinking of leaving at all. They love their church, and they have realized they do not know what it teaches, or what the Bible says. Chapter Nine has a word for them.

Most people who change churches change because they moved. The harder decision, the one in front of a person whose church is still there on Sunday, is the one the counting says least about. (What has been counted, and what it cannot show, is at the back.)

That decision is mostly a matter of Scripture, the teaching of your church, prayer, the Spirit's leading, the counsel of people who know you, and conscience. That is why most of this book is about those.

One honest word. Those six do not always agree, and the traditions do not weigh them the same way. A Catholic, an Orthodox Christian, a Presbyterian and a Pentecostal would each tell you differently what to do when they pull in different directions. This book cannot rank them for you. Your own tradition does, and the chapters ahead will point you to it.