Preacher/Author: Andy Johnson
Category: Articles, Church Life, Capitol Hill Baptist Church
Detail:
Getting Connected: A Joy and a Challenge
One of the singular joys and significant challenges of joining a new local church is figuring out how to feel connected to the congregation. Most of us don’t want to just have our names on a members list; we want to belong, to be a part, to feel that we contribute. That’s what we hope to help you with in this short article, to help you understand better how to get connected to the congregation of Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC). But we are aware that doing that at CHBC may be different than the experiences or avenues at some other churches.
In many churches you might try to get connected by signing up for a particular committee of interest, like the “missions committee” or the “facilities committee.” In others you might quickly join and serve in a particular ministry like the “youth department” or the “music ministry.” In still others you might sign up right away for a support group or be placed into a small group that’s really more like a church within a church. While we certainly have ample opportunities to volunteer at serve at CHBC, and we do have small groups available to interested members, none of these is the primary way that we encourage members to connect to the larger life of this local church. It’s not that such approaches are necessarily wrong, but we do think they may be less than the Biblical ideal. We don’t want your primary point of identification with CHBC to be what you do for us or your limiting yourself to a group of people pretty much just like yourself. Rather, we want your connection to CHBC to be defined most clearly by how you know and love, and are known and loved by, all sorts of people in the congregation. We want you to have relationships that are different than the way the world loves. We want you to be part of the family, not just volunteer help. But while that may sound nice and friendly, it’s admittedly pretty vague. So what does it actually look like to get connected to the members of CHBC?
Love as the Visible Mark of a Christian
Well, at its most basic, we hope that your connections to CHBC looks as much as possible like the kind of love that we see described among God’s people in the bible. There we read of Christians loving people who are very different than themselves and inconveniencing themselves primarily because they have a shared love for Christ (I Thessalonians 2:7-9). There we read about the kind of connection that comes from sharing our lives together, helping one another and spending time together with the deliberate aim of encouraging one another in the faith. (I Thessalonians 2:7-9). Our hope is that you will connect to CHBC through the kind of visible love that the Apostle John describes as normal among believers (1 John 3:23).
Jesus himself talked about how the joy of deliberate, mutual love would mark those whom he has known and saved. In the fifteenth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus says –
As the Father has loved me, If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as These things I have spoken to you, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." John 15:9-12
And later in his first letter, the Apostle John reminds his readers of Christ’s teaching, saying –
By this we know love, that But Little children, let us not By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.
One thing is certainly clear from these passages – Christians are visibly marked as those who love Christ based in large part on the way that they love one another. Yes, it is wonderful for us to serve in many more institutional ways, and personal repentance and an individual faith in Christ are a must if we are to see God, but how does that internal reality then show itself? Scripture says it shows itself perhaps most clearly by our love for specific other Christians – the other members of our local church, mainly. That’s how Scripture says “we know that we belong to the truth.” And that is the joy we want for members of CHBC.
Some Practical Ideas of How to Love Others
But we also realize that this kind of unstructured approach can seem really daunting to many people. It’s so much easier to just sign up for something. We get that. So let me suggest a few ways that you can begin to build these kinds of encouraging relationships at CHBC.
Stay around after services
One very simple first step is to just stay around after the conclusion of our morning and evening services. We hope that the refreshments we serve won’t merely be seen as a reward for making it through an hour-long sermon. We want them to encourage members to stay around and talk, to speak to visitors and to people they don’t know, and to make initial connections with other members, too. Certainly this can be awkward at times. But please stay around anyway; make an effort to talk to others you don’t know. Many members have met life-long friends in just this way.
Join a small group
Another helpful step may be to join a CHBC small group. We don’t require joining a small group as some churches do but we do try to make it an easy and welcoming option. Groups meet at various times and locations around the DC metro area. We offer gender-specific men’s or women’s small groups and also mixed groups that include unmarried and married members and often their children. Staff in the CHBC office will be glad to talk with you about a group that might work well for your schedule and location. Just call and ask to talk to one of the pastoral assistants about joining a small group. But as helpful as they may be, we don’t intend for small groups to be relational cul-de-sacs that define and, frankly, end your integration into the wider congregation at CHBC. We want small groups to be a welcoming first-step to help you continue on to broader and deeper relationships within the congregation. Still, we all have to start somewhere and many people find these groups an encouraging and manageable starting point.
Offer and accept hospitality
Throughout the bible one of the things that regularly marks God’s people is their love for others, or hospitality. Admittedly some folks may feel awkward about being the one to invite people over, or out, when you are new. But we’ve tried to build a culture at CHBC where hospitality is normal. So we hope that members will reach out to new members, but we also hope that new members will step up and invite longer-term members and other new members over for a meal or out for an activity from the very early days of their membership. Living these kinds of open lives together is a big part of how we create and sustain the hospitable culture of a gospel community.
Initiate or accept a discipling relationship
Almost certainly the best way to connect at CHBC is to initiate or accept an offer to establish an intentional discipling relationship. If you decide to pursue membership at CHBC, you’ll receive at your membership interview an article entitled “Encouraging Discipling Relationships Among the Members of Capitol Hill Baptist Church.” We’d encourage you to read that article to understand more about what we mean when we talk about discipling and about building a “culture of discipling” at CHBC. But in brief, let me just say that one of the clearest ways that the love we read about earlier in John 15 is made visible is when we intentionally set out to do one another spiritual good in discipling relationships. It’s fun to have friendships based on shared interests or hobbies or experiences. But it is wonderfully glorifying to God to have friendships based most fundamentally on a desire to encourage one another in the hope of the gospel. The kind of relationships where we intentionally set out to study Scripture, or to read a good Christian book, or to talk about this week’s sermon all with the aim of encouraging one another to hope and trust more in God. As a new member of the church you don’t need to sign up for anything or get anyone’s permission you approach another member (of your gender, please) to establish a discipling relationship. But if you want some help in thinking through getting started, the Discipling Core Seminar class or our annual Discpling Workshop may help. And you can always contact the CHBC staff to find out about these events or to just get a little help figuring out how to get started.
A wonderful display of God’s glory
Whatever route you take, we want to encourage you to look for ways, in keeping with your personality, to establish meaningful relationships with other members of CHBC. Certainly you can talk with various Deacons about ways to eventually volunteer and serve, but don’t make that the first thing you do. First, look for ways to just get to know other members of CHBC and to let them get to know you. Take the first few months of your membership to spend your energy on some of the ideas I just suggested. We feel strongly about this because we value each member of our congregation simply as a brother or sister in Christ, not just for the ways they can serve. But, you know, you will really kind of serve us best by doing what we’ve talked about in this article . . . by building the relationships that give and receive encouragement. That’s fundamental to what it means for us to be the body of Christ in this local church. And that’s how the world will know that we are Jesus’ disciples, by the way we love one another (John 13:35). We look forward to the part God may have for you to play in bringing that glorious reality into even sharper view at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.
