Ah, Sunday. That majestic morning when my children awake to the aroma of eggs and bacon and fresh-squeezed orange juice. When they bound down the stairs, Bibles in hand and a song in their hearts. When I lead them in family worship over breakfast, and my wife plays the piano as we prepare our hearts for meeting with the people of God.

The only downside when we finish is that we still have time to kill. Oh well. At least we’ll be super early to church — again!

Reality Check

If you’re smirking, it’s because you know this is not reality. Many of us struggle just to get ourselves in one piece to church, much less an elderly parent or a gaggle of little ones. So often, we shovel in some breakfast and figure out what to wear and look for our keys and clamber into the car and lose our patience on the way until we arrive, distracted and disheveled — again. Though we walk smilingly through the doors, our minds and hearts remain miles away.

This scenario may be a little extreme, but it is less hypothetical than some of us — even some of the shiniest saints — may wish to admit. It’s one thing to be present at church, but it’s another to be prepared for church.

Before considering practical remedies for this rut, an important caveat is in order.

If you struggle with depression or are riddled with doubts or have been mistreated by church leaders or are raising kids by yourself, it’s understandable if attending church feels like an arduous ministry. For some Christians, simply getting out of bed requires courage and faith — how much more getting all the way to church. As Rosaria Butterfield has said, “We may never know the treacherous journey people have taken to land in the pew next to us.” So, if gathering with a healthy church is hard and you’re doing so anyway, God bless you.

That said, I am not writing mainly to those for whom church is painful but to those for whom church has become routine — the kind of believers who, when Sunday rolls around, are more likely to yawn than wince. Thankfully, there are many simple changes we can all make to maximize our Sundays. Consider just two.

1. Come Hungry, Leave Full

If your car has been sitting in freezing rain for days, it may take a while for the engine to warm up and run well. For so many years of my Christian life, I basically came to the sermon cold. Maybe I knew the passage to be preached, but I hadn’t read it beforehand.

Why not make it a practice to read the sermon passage before coming to church? It’s not difficult, and you have a whole week to do it. This habit will enrich your sermon-listening experience since you’ll be familiar with the passage. You will therefore lean in, curious to see how the pastor handles this doctrine or that verse. It’s also a habit you can easily practice with others — your family or roommate or friend. It will warm the engine of your mind (and hopefully your heart) so that you are locked in when the message begins, eager to learn and grow.

How often do you pray for your pastor as he’s preparing sermons for you? It’s good if you hold him to a high standard (1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9), but do you hold yourself to a high standard of prayer for him? Sermon prep is hard. It’s lonely. It’s war. But you can join the fight by asking God to give your pastor insight, to guard him from distraction, to guide him in faithfully unleashing and applying God’s truth.

Don’t stop there, however. Come hungry, yes, but also resolve to leave full.

Sometimes, I tell my congregation that what they get out of my sermons is not just up to me. It’s also up to them. What’s your posture when the message begins? Is it essentially relax and wait to be entertained, or is it lean in, Bible open, ready to hear from the living God? Admittedly, this expectancy comes easier with some passages. I recently preached about an Israelite assassin stabbing a Moabite king, whose fat swallowed the blade as he soiled himself (Judges 3:12–30). The story is, let’s just say, captivating. But what about passages that are deeply familiar or almost elementary in their simplicity? If pride thinks, I’ve heard this before, humility thinks, Who here hasn’t? And if pride thinks, I know this already, humility thinks, I need this again.

Resolving to “leave full” presupposes, of course, that you’re hearing the Bible faithfully proclaimed in your church. (If not, find a different one.) To be sure, you may not be sitting under the greatest preaching in the world. But that’s okay, for as Harold Best once remarked, “A mature Christian is easily edified.” That quote challenges me so much. Let’s say the production quality of the music or the delivery skill of the preacher leaves much to be desired. Are the words true? If so, we should be easily edified. We should be able to leave full.

2. Come Early, Stay Late

The practice of coming early and lingering after is not always easy to pull off, but it can make all the difference. The needed resolve just can’t come on Sunday morning. That’s too late! As my friend Dean Inserra likes to say, Sunday-morning church is a Saturday-night decision. The only way you will ever find yourself there early is if you have forced yourself to be there early.

But arriving early — which of course means waking up early and adjusting your morning routine — yields all kinds of benefits. For starters, it prevents distraction. You’re not careening into the parking lot 43 seconds before the service begins. You’re not rushing through the doors, unable to really engage with anyone because, well, you have to get in there and find a seat (perhaps after dropping off a kid or three). When you do finally sit down — or not, because everyone’s already singing — your mind is racing. Announcements sail over your head. You absorb little from the prayers. Bottom line: you’re engaging from a deficit, trying to catch up, trying to focus, trying to worship. But because you didn’t come earlier, you don’t begin worshiping until halfway through the service.

Arriving early is only half the battle, though. It also helps to linger after the service.

If you’re a Christian, there is no day in your week more important than Sunday. Because it’s the day King Jesus got up from the dead, it’s the day on which his redeemed people have assembled to celebrate him. Sunday worship is the launching pad of your week — a God-designed opportunity to be replenished, receive instruction and encouragement, and catch your breath before stepping back into the duties and distractions of life in a chaotic world. Why rush to leave?

When you linger afterward, you open yourself to connect with others unhurriedly — which nowadays is a countercultural gift. You can ask deliberate questions and listen well. After all, as one person observed, “Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.” If someone is visiting, you can greet him or her warmly, answering questions and exhibiting genuine interest in the exchange. If they’re a fellow member, you can draw him or her out (Proverbs 20:5) and perhaps speak a simple word of encouragement or of challenge — or, best of all, words of prayer, lifting up burdens on the spot to the God who hears.

Sticking around after church also gives you the chance to ask another member how the Lord just ministered to them. Posing such a question shouldn’t be perceived as super-spiritual — it should be normal. How tragic that we can stand in the lobby and feel comfortable discussing fantasy football or the latest show (which is fine) but awkward discussing the very thing we’ve come together to do. Church is not just an event we show up to; it’s a family we belong to. And since the family gathers to be changed, not merely entertained, why not seize the opportunity to debrief while the songs and sermon are still fresh, still ringing in our ears, still begging to be applied?

A mature Christian arrives with eyes for others, plotting to encourage and serve. On Sundays, we meet with Jesus Christ and these blood-bought people he’s placed in our lives — so it’s a privilege to come early and stay late.

Positioned for Success

In an age of customized DIY spirituality that values convenience and comfort more than any previous era in history, committing to a local church amounts to a revolutionary act — and a beautiful one.

By resolving to come hungry and leave full, we position ourselves to grow. And by resolving to come early and stay late, we position ourselves to serve.

Christianity is not a spectator sport. So, let’s get in the game — and stay there, side by side, Sunday after Sunday — until Jesus our King brings us safely home.

I’m a pastor, and I sometimes deal with doubt.

I have doubted the efficacy of prayer. I have wrestled with the problem of evil, especially in light of natural disasters, terminal childhood illnesses, and a hundred other horrors. I have struggled with the fate of those who never hear the gospel. None of these questions is comfortable or easy for me.

If a Christian told me he had never dealt with doubt, I wouldn’t believe him. Or at least I would respectfully conclude he was in denial, or lacked self-awareness, or wasn’t a serious-thinking person.

A unique feature of life in the modern West, observes philosopher Charles Taylor, is the experience of a “cross-pressured” existence. The plausibility of faith has become contested — implicitly and constantly. This is a new development in human history. In premodern times, it was “impossible not to believe.” The Enlightenment then made it “possible not to believe.” Now it is increasingly “impossible to believe” — or at least to believe in a faith-nurturing world.

Bewildered and Terrified

As sophisticated modern people, we can sometimes flatter ourselves and think, I have a college education; I live in a scientific age; I don’t believe in resurrections — as if first-century men and women were dim-witted people looking for miracles everywhere. It’s true that if you could transport yourself back to the first century, you would have a hard time finding atheists. Virtually everyone you’d encounter would be a supernaturalist — believing in some kind of God or gods. But that doesn’t mean ancient folks were gullible.

“Even the strongest believer wouldn’t have imagined that one man could be raised before the end of time.”

When Jesus performed miracles, people were often more bewildered than impressed — the response was less “Do it again!” and more “Who are you?” Or take the virgin conception. Such a notion was just as laughable then as it is today. First-century people knew how babies were conceived. As I once heard someone quip, when Joseph learns Mary is pregnant, he doesn’t break into a rendition of “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” No, he assumes what any of us would — and sets out to divorce her.

The same applies to the empty tomb. Despite Jesus’s repeated predictions, not a single eyewitness exclaims, “Ah, day three — of course!” They respond the same way we would: with confusion and downright terror (Matthew 28:8; Mark 16:8; Luke 24:9–11, 36–41; John 20:11–13). They assume his body has been stolen; they assume he’s a ghost; they assume anything except, “He’s back.” Thomas can’t even bring himself to believe after all his most trusted friends have looked him in the eye and told him!

Even the Great Commission is given to doubters: “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted” (Matthew 28:16–17 NIV). We import a triumphant mood into the scene; in reality, some of these guys are still reeling, still grappling, still coming to terms with their whole world being capsized.

No Category for a Single Resurrection

It’s also worth noting that first-century Jews, although culturally disposed to believe in God, were anti-disposed to believe that someone could be resurrected in the middle of history. This is why, when Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will rise again, all she can do is sigh: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). Like most Jews, she believes in a general resurrection at the end of history (see Daniel 12:2). But she has no category for a single resurrection in the middle of history. Nobody did. Even the strongest believer wouldn’t have imagined that one man could be raised before the end of time.

And the disciples were no different. But something occurred after Jesus’s death that utterly changed them. Something occurred that pulled them out of the hiding places where they’d fled in hopeless fear (Mark 14:50). Something moved them to start publicly insisting, at the risk of their lives, that the Carpenter was — wonder of wonders — alive. And when the blows came, something propelled them to keep preaching all the more boldly, even rejoicing that they’d been counted worthy to suffer disgrace for his name (Acts 5:41).

No Category for a God-Man

Remember, too, that while first-century Jews were (unlike many modern people) disposed to believe in God, it was unthinkable to worship a man as God. This is why the Pharisees repeatedly accused Jesus of blasphemy — he was claiming for himself the prerogatives of God alone. Even near the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry, the Pharisees “held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (Mark 3:6).

So, were some ancient people just inclined to believe in a god under every rock? Sure — if they were polytheists. But not Jews. They were radically different from their Roman neighbors. To put it bluntly: a modern secular Manhattanite is far more likely to start believing in a God than a first-century Jew was to believe in a God-man.

No Category for a Dead Messiah

In sum, arguments about the “plausibility” of faith cut both ways.

On the one hand, faith in a transcendent deity is more contested, more embattled, more difficult than ever before. It’s not that ancient believers never battled serious doubt (see the Psalms); it’s that doubt takes on a certain shape and texture when, for the first time in history, life feels explainable without God. This is the cultural wallpaper — largely unnoticed but everywhere present — of our WEIRDER (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, Romanticist) world. So, we shouldn’t be surprised if our doubts carry a certain buoyancy — if overcoming them can feel like trying to keep a beach ball underwater.

On the other hand, it is naive, if not a touch haughty, to assume that prescientific people woke up looking for outlandish things to believe. Sure, faith in God was more intuitive then, but no one found it easy to imagine a virgin getting pregnant or a corpse getting up. Especially a messianic corpse — that would’ve been an oxymoron, and an offensive one. No Jew believed God’s Messiah could possibly die. (How could he? The Messiah sits on David’s throne forever.) So, the sight of “mighty” Jesus pinned to a Roman cross, suffocating to death like some weak and pathetic slave, was conclusive proof that the gig was up: just another imposter, not Immanuel.

“If the disciples had no category for a dead Messiah, they certainly had no category for a resurrected one.”

And if the disciples had no category for a dead Messiah, they certainly had no category for a resurrected one! Again, theologically speaking, no Jew could imagine an individual resurrection in the middle of history. And above all, no right-minded Jew would ever be disposed to look at a Galilean day laborer from an obscure backwater in the Roman empire and worship him as Yahweh, the Lord of heaven and earth.

But that’s precisely what happened.

Unthinkably Plausible

We may think of a miracle as the least probable explanation for an event. And it is — for ordinary events.

But the events of Easter Sunday were not ordinary, not in the least. Again, see the disciples’ reaction! They didn’t wish each other a happy Easter. They were dumbstruck, terrified. They lacked a natural category for the resurrection, and so do we. And yet, I’ve never heard a more plausible explanation for the disciples’ overnight transformation and the birth of the Jesus revolution.

All of which (among other things) leads me to take a deep breath: I believe the unthinkable happened after all.

If you had to choose five adjectives to describe God, would holy appear on the list? I trust so. Righteous probably would too. No doubt merciful or loving would be a shoo-in. But what about this divine descriptor: happy? Would that make your list?

It may sound somewhat strange, but God is happy. Happier than the happiest person you’ve ever known. Even before there was time, he was happy — infinitely happy within a triangle of love. From all eternity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (one God in three persons) delighted to share the joy of divinity with one another.

So, why did the triune God create the universe? Did he need something to complete him? No. Creation was an overflow of joy — not a filling up, but a spilling out. In extravagant generosity, the persons of the Trinity decided to share their boundless gladness with the work of their hands. You were made to be happy in a happy God.

And all of this has everything to do with your prayer life.

When Keller Discovered Prayer

Few people have taught me more about prayer than Tim Keller. He himself taught eloquently on the subject for decades before (at least in his estimation) he truly learned to pray. In a wide-ranging interview not long before his death, Keller was asked, “Looking back, is there anything you wish you had done differently in ministry?”

“Absolutely,” Keller replied. “I should have prayed more.”

In many ways, Keller’s Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God records experientially what he had long affirmed theologically. What happened is worth quoting at length:

In the second half of my adult life, I discovered prayer. I had to.

In the fall of 1999, I taught a Bible study course on the Psalms. It became clear to me that I was barely scratching the surface of what the Bible commanded and promised regarding prayer. Then came the dark weeks in New York after 9/11, when our whole city sank into a kind of corporate clinical depression, even as it rallied. For my family the shadow was intensified as my wife, Kathy, struggled with the effects of Crohn’s disease. Finally, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

At one point during all this, my wife urged me to do something with her we had never been able to muster the self-discipline to do regularly. She asked me to pray with her every night. Every night. She used an illustration that crystallized her feelings very well. As we remember it, she said something like this:

“Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine — a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? No — it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget; you would never miss. Well, if we don’t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all we are facing. I’m certainly not. We have to pray; we can’t let it just slip our minds.”

For both of us the penny dropped; we realized the seriousness of the issue, and we admitted that anything that was truly a nonnegotiable necessity was something we could do. (9–10)

Tim and Kathy maintained this unbroken streak night after night for more than twenty years — all the way through until the end of his life. But it wasn’t just a nightly discipline that changed him. He also began reading and studying, searching for help:

Kathy’s jolting challenge, along with my own growing conviction that I just didn’t get prayer, led me into a search. I wanted a far better personal prayer life. I began to read widely and experiment in prayer. As I looked around, I quickly came to see that I was not alone. (10)

Spoiler alert: his quest ultimately led to deeper engagement with, and fresh appreciation for, his own theological heritage. From Augustine in the fifth century all the way to Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the twentieth, Keller realized anew he didn’t have to choose between robust theology and vibrant experience. His own tradition featured both. “I was not being called to leave behind my theology and launch out to look for ‘something more,’ for experience. Rather, I was meant to ask the Holy Spirit to help me experience my theology” (16–17).

Keller has enriched my own experience of God by helping me to meditate on his Word, marvel at my adoption, adore him for his character, and step into divine joy.

1. Meditate Your Way to Delight

Can you relate to the disconnect between theology and experience? I sure can. God is the most glorious and satisfying person in the universe — I know this, I preach this, I write articles about this — and yet, before the splendor of his majesty, my heart can feel like a block of ice. The reason is often quite simple: I haven’t slowed down enough to really warm my heart — to thaw it — before the fire of God’s Word. I merely glance over a passage and get on with my day.

That doesn’t work. We must slow down and linger over the words of life. Biblical meditation is the music of prayer and involves a kind of two-step dance: first, Keller says, we think a truth out, and then we think it in until its ideas become “big” and “sweet,” moving and affecting — until the reality of God is sensed upon the heart (162).

This doesn’t mean we are chasing an experience; it means we are pursuing a living God. Above all, prayer isn’t merely “a way to get things from God but a way to get more of God himself” (21). This is staggering. Despite our distracted, fidgety, wandering defiance, he beckons us in and — wonder of wonders — offers us himself. And this is precisely what we need, since hearts wired for intimacy were made to be swept up into the life of the Trinity (e.g., John 17:21; 2 Peter 1:4; 1 John 1:3). As Keller explains, “We can see why a triune God would call us to converse with him, to know and relate to him. It is because he wants to share the joy he has. Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness of God himself” (68).

2. Remember Why He Listens

Another key to unlocking joy in prayer is to marvel at the doctrine of adoption — the glorious truth that God not only acquits believers in heaven’s courtroom but also welcomes us, as it were, into the living room.

Pondering this familial bond, and the intimacy it secures, has unparalleled power to nurture joy in drowsy hearts. The seventeenth-century minister Thomas Goodwin once recounted seeing a man and his young son walking along. Suddenly the father stopped, lifted up his boy, and said, “I love you.” The boy hugged his dad and said, “I love you too.” Then the father put him down and they kept walking. Now, here’s the question: was the child more legally a son in his father’s arms than when he was on the street? Of course not. But through the embrace, he vibrantly experienced his sonship.

This is what prayer offers us. The most ordinary believer in the world has access to “the most intimate and unbreakable relationship” with the Lord of the world. Just imagine, Keller says, what it takes to visit the president of the United States. Only those who merit his time and attention are granted entry. You must have credentials, accomplishments, and perhaps a power base of your own — unless, of course, you’re one of his children. That detail changes everything. Likewise, in prayer, we lean experientially — not just theologically — into the Father’s loving embrace (70).

Or as Keller put it in a sermon, in one of the most lovely images I’ve ever contemplated: The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 a.m. for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.

3. Begin Your Prayers with Adoration

The pages of Scripture brim with summons to boldly approach our Father and lay our requests at his feet (e.g., Matthew 7:7–8; Philippians 4:6; Hebrews 4:16; James 4:2). Danger arises, though, when adoration becomes a mere afterthought — which reveals more about our self-absorbed hearts than we may care to acknowledge. Reflecting on the parable of the prodigal sons (Luke 15:11–32), Keller warns against an “elder-brother spirit” that robs our ability to enjoy the assurance of fatherly love. How might we detect if we’re succumbing to this danger?

Perhaps the clearest symptom of this lack of assurance is a dry prayer life. Though elder brothers may be diligent in prayer, there is no wonder, awe, intimacy, or delight in their conversations with God. . . . Elder brothers may be disciplined in observing regular times of prayer, but their prayers are almost wholly taken up with a recitation of needs and petitions, not spontaneous, joyful praise. (The Prodigal God, 72–73)

Though unsettling to admit, difficult things in life move us to petition far more readily than happy things move us to praise. One of the most practical “next steps” for your prayer life, then, is simply this: spend some unhurried time reveling in who God is. If you begin there — contemplating his character, gazing at his glory, praising him for his promises — then your heart will be ready to bring requests to his throne.

4. Pray to Get God Himself

God never promises to give believers all good things on our terms. What he promises, rather, is to work all things — even the bad — for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28). And when we don’t receive a good thing we want, we can rest in the knowledge that we already have the best thing. We have him. As Keller puts it, in God we have the headwaters of all we truly desire — even if a tributary of our joy goes dry.

And yet, God wants us to ask things of him. To protect us from pride and self-sufficiency, he rarely gives us what we want apart from prayer. But through prayer, our Father withholds nothing good from his children (Matthew 7:11). God delights to give himself in his gifts. Keller concludes:

Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things he has for us. Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us many of the things we most desire. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life. (18)

The ability to converse with the King of the universe isn’t just an honor — it’s the glorious union of two disparate truths: awe before an infinite being and intimacy with a personal friend. Because we’re made to know a triune God — a merry, generous, hospitable community of persons — prayer is the furthest thing from a sterile concept or boring duty. It’s an invitation into unimaginable joy.

“We live in a divided age” is so self-evidently true that it’s frankly boring to write. Theories abound on how we got here; what’s undisputed is that we’re here. It sure can feel as if the temperature of virtually every conversation and debate, however trivial, is set to blazing hot.

And worst of all, the previous paragraph doesn’t just describe the world — it describes many churches. Rather than shining as a contrast to the perpetual outrage machine, many of us are too busy being conformed to the pattern of this age (Romans 12:2).

How, then, can believers forge meaningful unity in a fractured time? It is looking unlikely that we’re going to tweet our way out of the problem. So what’s the path forward?

Whiplash World

As author Yuval Levin has observed in A Time to Build, the function of institutions in modern life has largely shifted from formative to performative — from habitats for growth to platforms for self-expression. Enter a secular university, for example, and you may well emerge more coddled than shaped. But this performative dynamic isn’t confined to colleges; it also infects local churches.

Long past are the days when American churchgoers looked to their pastors first (or perhaps even second or third) for help navigating a fraught cultural landscape. Nowadays it’s pundits — whether on cable news or talk radio or social media — whose voices are most formative. On one level, this is understandable. Pastors are not omnicompetent. They aren’t experts on everything, or even most things. Thus when it comes to current events, Christians should (in one sense) expect less from their pastors.

Nevertheless, the larger trend is troubling. When church becomes just another arena in which to perform — whether via a “leadership position” or simply by keeping up appearances — rather than a family in which to be shaped, it has ceased to occupy the gravitational center of one’s life. No wonder priorities spin out of orbit. No wonder people demand that their pastors affirm, and publicly echo, their settled opinions on debatable matters. I’ve heard countless stories of someone leaving their church because of their politics. What I have yet to hear is someone leaving their politics because of their church.

One reason churches are losing the battle to form hearts is because the Christians who visit and join and show up for worship Sunday after Sunday are battered by the storms of digital discourse. They’re limping along, exhausted and distracted and confused.

No Longer Tossed

This is precisely why congregational unity is so essential. Unity is not a squishy sentiment or optional add-on to the Christian life; it is something for which Jesus prayed and bled and died (John 17:22). Just consider the apostle Paul’s logic in Ephesians 4. The ascended King Jesus gave the gift of pastors to equip church members for ministry (verses 8–12). As such ministry builds up the body (verse 13), the ensuing unity tears down whatever threatens it (verse 14). In other words, ministry generates unity, and unity generates stability. Thus, unity’s purpose is plain: “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (verse 14).

Living in a turbulent time? Labor for unity. It will have a stabilizing effect.

But how, practically, do we do this in the local church? How do we keep each other from being pummeled by the raging rapids of modern media? Here are two suggestions.

1. Dust Off Your Documents

A good statement of faith, used properly, is a goldmine for church unity. Same with a members’ covenant. These documents shouldn’t gather dust in a file drawer or be confined to a website. They should be used, for they are pregnant with unity-forging potential. Why? They provide a common core, enabling churches to keep the main things central and helping to regulate the temperature of our debates. The million-dollar question then becomes whether our statement of faith speaks to a given topic. Yes, clearly? Then we also will. Yes, sort of? Then we might. No, not at all? Then we likely won’t.

In my estimation, a good statement of faith is neither so exhaustive that an undiscipled Christian couldn’t join the church, nor so mere that there’s little the church is actually standing for. But we refuse to divide over things we never agreed to agree on.

As a church planter, I’ve had to think about developing documents that will establish biblical guardrails — while recognizing that not all doctrines are equally important or clear. In a recent membership class, someone asked why we don’t stake out a clearer position on the end times. It’s a good question. I briefly explained the idea of theological triage — there are first-rank doctrines we must agree on to be Christians, second-rank doctrines we must agree on to be members of the same church, and third-rank doctrines we can actually disagree on and still be members of the same church.

Even if various gospel-proclaiming churches classify second- and third-rank doctrines a bit differently, the classification system itself is a useful tool. By codifying only certain doctrines (statement of faith) and promises (covenant), a church crystallizes what members must agree on — and where there’s room to disagree. This engenders confidence in the essentials and freedom in everything else. This is not to say that a pastor should avoid debatable matters in his preaching — as he unfolds the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), many such matters will arise. It’s simply to say that a church cannot bind members’ consciences on issues where (the church has agreed, as reflected in its documents) God has not clearly spoken.

“It’s counterintuitive but true: one way to preserve sound doctrine is to leave ample room for Christian freedom.”

It’s counterintuitive but true: one way to preserve sound doctrine is to leave ample room for Christian freedom. Otherwise, churches can easily succumb to legalism by requiring agreement on third-rank issues. But by lowering the fences on debatable matters, we raise the fences on non-debatable ones. Or to change the metaphor, by lowering our collective voice on issues where Scripture is not clear — say, a specific political-policy proposal — we can raise our voice on issues where it is. This is why liberty of conscience is so critical in an age of outrage. As Mark Dever has observed, leaving space for disagreement (on many matters other than gospel clarity) is, in part, what keeps the gospel clear. When we lack a clear understanding of Christian liberty and space for conscience, we will be tempted to stick more into the gospel than is there — that is, agreement on a wider variety of issues.

Don’t underestimate the practical value of church documents. They are your friends; weave them into the life of your church. Corporately confess portions of your statement of faith on Sundays. Rehearse the covenant’s promises when you convene a members’ meeting or celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Quote the documents in sermon applications. In so doing, you will forge unity around what has been agreed on — and avoid division around what hasn’t.

2. Get a Table

Another way to foster church unity, not to mention sanity, is to trade the Twitter timeline for a table. I mean this literally. How many hours per week do you typically spend scrolling through social media? (Statistically, it’s probably more than you think.) By comparison, how many do you spend conversing with fellow church members over meals? (Statistically, it may be less than you think.) If the first number dwarfs the second, consider that a check-engine light for your soul. Proximity may not always breed unity, but distance certainly won’t. It’s just harder to resent someone when you’re asking them to pass the salt.

“Christian, you are spiritually responsible for the members of your church, not for strangers on the Internet.”

Christian, you are spiritually responsible for the members of your church, not for strangers on the Internet. Yet who is getting your best energy these days — the members or the strangers? Likewise, if you are a pastor, remember that on the last day you will give account to God not for your followers, but for your flock (Hebrews 13:17). Who is claiming your best energy these days — the followers or the flock?

To borrow language from later in Ephesians 4, we are called to “put off” anything that decreases our joy in God, and in his children, and to “put on” whatever increases it (verses 22–24; see also 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20). If something is generating suspicion or coldness toward fellow believers — especially fellow members — then put it off. Maybe that means shut it off. Pray your heart would be more animated by the faces in your membership directory than by the faces in your newsfeed.

No Replacement

Technology and parachurch ministries are gifts, but they are no replacement for the local church. Anchor your identity there, friend, for only in the communion of the saints will you find ballast amid the storms. In a world of endless options, the church makes our commitments clear. In a world of enormous complexity, the church makes our duties simple. In a world of escalating division, the church makes our unity sweet.

These are my people, and I am theirs.