The Discouraged Church Seeker, Part One: When Membership Is a Gate that Keeps People Out

One of my favorite passages in the whole Bible is Acts 2:42-47, which describes the early church:

The Fellowship of the Believers

⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³ Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

My heart longs for a church like this, which is built on love and grace and fellowship. Doesn’t yours? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to be a churchgoing Christian if church looked like Acts 2?

Hands down, the hardest part of moving (for me) is finding a church, especially one that looks at least a little like Acts 2. A year or so after we moved from Michigan to the D.C. area, I wrote this post about finding a church. Six months later, we found “Church C,” a new church plant that launched near our home. It turned out to be about as close to my ideal church as I could imagine.

And now, a year into our life in Memphis, we’re back at square one, or rather, looking for “Church D.” After a fresh disappointment (it still feels raw) with a church we attended for a few months, I’m ready to be super transparent and just say this: trying to find a church home can be downright painful.

It can be painful to find a place that feels like it could be right, and then find out you don’t “fit.” That there’s no “room” for you the way you are.

This is my own particular story, and I’m going to break it up into a three-part series. I know there are many variations on the same theme–people who feel they’re not wanted or don’t “fit” because of their lifestyle, family structure, background, doubts, whatever. By writing about this, I’m hoping to purge some of my disappointment, but I’m also hoping that those of you who have experienced those feelings of “I don’t fit here,” will be encouraged to know you’re not alone.

I’ll call the church in question here “Church X.” I noticed Church X’s sign not long after we moved here. After visiting a few other places on my list that didn’t feel right, I scoped out Church X’s website and decided to give it a try. They met in a school gymnasium, and the dress code was clearly jeans and t-shirts. These things reminded me of Church A, which made me feel at home. I followed our usual process, attending alone the first couple of weeks to get a sense of the place. When those forays went well, I brought along E and the girls, which meant introducing L to a new environment. It took a couple of weeks for her to warm up, but by the third weekend, she was excited to go to Sunday school to play with the other kids, make crafts, and learn more about Jesus. She likes Jesus.

In the meantime, E and I were enjoying the Sunday morning worship and teaching, and I attended a four-week large-group women’s study on Sunday evenings, where I met a few friendly women. I began to see a future for us in this little community.

And then the questions began to surface. When I inquired about volunteering with the women’s ministry, I discovered there was no such thing, just a group of women who would occasionally plan something like the four-week study I attended. When I inquired about small groups, I was told I needed to attend the membership class. A membership class? To find out about small groups? I was confused. Do you have to be a member to get involved in community?

As it turns out, you do.

And maybe I’m narrow-minded in this regard, but my experience at Church A, Church B, Church C and the other churches we’ve attended in between has been that small groups don’t require membership. There’s no gate to pass through to join the community. In fact, newcomers are welcome and encouraged to join small groups in order to get to know people better, have a safe place to learn more about the church community, and build relationships–hopefully so that they’ll learn whether or not the church is the right place for them. For nonbelievers, research shows small groups are generally the safest environment in which to explore their questions about God and Jesus and faith.

Church X is different. As an “outsider” (yes, the pastor actually used that word–church members are “insiders”), you may attend Sunday services (where you will be “loved on”), and the sporadic large-group events that are offered whenever the whim strikes. Large-group events are supposedly where you will have the opportunity to “make friends”–I don’t know about you, but I’ve never made friends by such irregular means of connection. Maybe I have a different understanding of the word “friend.”

When I asked about the regularity of said large-group opportunities that would allow me to “make friends,” I was told they like to “keep it simple,” and that if I wanted more “programming,” I could go down the road to the big Baptist church, which has plenty of programming. So I am expected to base my sense of community–and my resultant decision to become a covenanted member of the church–on a smattering of occasional large-group opportunities, combined with the limited interaction I’m able to have on Sunday mornings. You may as well ask me to up and marry someone with whom I’ve been on three or four dates. Whoa. Just whoa.

The pastor likened these venues or “connection opportunities” to parts of a home. Sunday services are the “foyer.” Large-group events are the “living room.” But in order to be allowed into the “kitchen,” or the inner sanctum of the church, you must first become a member.

Are you seeing it yet? On top of boxing in potential members, at Church X, there is no small group opportunity available to seekers/nonbelievers. Because you have to make a statement of faith in order to become a member, and you have to be a member to attend a small group. You have to believe in Jesus first. No Jesus, no community. And by turn, you could also surmise that small groups aren’t a vehicle for sharing the gospel. Believers only, folks.

I found this incredibly interesting. I almost asked, “Do you think Jesus kept the sinners, the unbelievers, the prostitutes, and the tax collectors in his “foyer” or his “living room?” But I bit my tongue.

The answer, of course, is heck no. Jesus invites us into the kitchen right from the start, so that we won’t ever want to leave.

I then asked, “What if I have a seeker friend I’d like to invite to my small group so he/she can get to know other believers and have a place to ask questions?”

The pastor replied, “I’d encourage you to start a separate group or study with that person outside the church. We can’t meet everyone’s needs and we can’t be responsible for every seeker out there.”

He may as well have said, “The Great Commission? What’s that?”

I want my small group to be a safe place for both believers and nonbelievers, a place where everyone at the table can feel free to invite a questioning friend. A place that can be an entry point into the larger church. Not a members-only club you have to sign an agreement to get into.

[Tweet “Jesus never classified people as “insiders” and “outsiders.””] We are all the children of God, called to shepherd the lost back into the loving fold.

Thank the Lord. That’s the church I want to be part of.