How to Find a Good Church

Now, I've heard it said that the Christian life actually involves three conversions.

First, you're converted to Christ.

You confess him as your Lord and Savior.

Second, you're converted to the church.

You renounce at least some of your rugged American individualism and you commit to being a churchman.

You say, those are my pastors and these are my people.

And then third, you get converted to God's mission.

You stop living for yourself and your personal mission in life and you start living for Jesus and for his mission.

To make disciples is who make disciples.

Now, you can go to the book of Acts and you can study this and you can see as the gospel is preached and people come to Christ, immediately they're formed into churches and they're living together in community and on mission and they're inviting their friends and inviting their neighbors and people are coming to faith every single day of the week and they're worshiping together on Sunday.

So you see this, converted to Christ, converted to the church, and then converted to his mission.

Well, today I want to talk about that second conversion, the conversion to Christ's church.

See, when you come to Christ, you're not just saved as an individual.

You're actually brought into his covenant community.

You're grafted into the body of Christ.

Paul says it this way.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

See, salvation is a community creating event.

We're saved by our loving heavenly father through the work of Jesus, the son of God, and we are adopted into his family.

And that family, is meant to have a local expression.

You see this everywhere in the New Testament.

The gospel gets preached in city after city.

People believe it and put their faith in Jesus.

And then a community forms in that city called the church.

You can read the book of Acts and you can watch it happen.