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Podcast: Learning to Love the Local Church (Megan Hill)

June 01, 2020 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Why We Need the Local Church

In this episode, Megan Hill, author of A Place to Belong: Learning to Love the Local Church, discusses the importance of the local church for our lives as God's people. She reflects on the challenging season we've all been in due to COVID-19, explains why the local church is so essential for our spiritual growth as Christians, and offers three practical suggestions for cultivating deeper relationships with other church members.

A Place to Belong

A Place to Belong

Megan Hill

This book helps readers delight in being a part of relationships within the church—no matter how messy and awkward they seem—with rich theology, practical direction, and study questions for group use.

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COVID-19 and the Importance of the Local Church

01:30

Matt Tully
We're recording this in late April of 2020 in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. I think many—if not most—churches have not been gathering together in person for a number of weeks now, but I think one upside that I've experienced—and I've heard others say similar things—is that they're being reminded afresh of how important church community really is because we're apart. And so I wonder if that's been the case for you and your family?

Megan Hill
I would say certainly. I was just saying to my husband yesterday that one thing I miss is the casual conversations that come up when you see somebody in the hall at church or when you're sitting next to them in worship. To schedule a Zoom meeting, or even to send them a text, just feels like you almost have to have a point for organizing that. Whereas when you just see someone at church and say, Hey, how's that thing with your mother? or How are you doing?, you find out things about them and get to know them in a more organic way that, even with the blessing of technology, doesn't quite make room for.

Matt Tully
Yeah, totally. Do you feel like you're learning anything new, or maybe even just coming to a fresh realization about, when it comes to the local church and its value in your own life through this experience?

Megan Hill
On week one and week two I sort of thought, Everything is over! Nothing's ever going to be the same again! This is terrible!, just in regards to not being able to meet together physically and having our worship services streamed and Zoom meetings and all of this. And then I think the Lord was just very gracious to remind me that he's the one who builds his church. He's the one who watches over his church. We're not physically present anymore, but the fundamental things that are true about the church—that Christ loves her and died for her and is preserving her and gathering her and increasing her—all those things are still true even when I can't see them or experience them physically. And that's really brought me a lot of comfort, that it's not that everything is ruined. It's just that it looks a little different right now.

Scripture vs. Reality of Church

03:57

Matt Tully
Along the same lines as that, I think it's fair to say that oftentimes our experience of the local church can feel pretty unremarkable; and yet, you listed out some of the amazing things about the church: things that we see in Scripture, the beauty of the church, and the eternal significance of the church. How do you, in your own mind, reconcile those two seemingly contradictory ideas—that on the one hand our experience can often be unremarkable, and yet we read in Scripture that the church is truly remarkable in so many ways?

Megan Hill
I think that's very consistent with most of the Bible's teaching. The kingdom is a little mustard seed and it grows into this giant tree. And really, our experience of the kingdom is often very small and seems like something to be overlooked. And yet Jesus tells us, The truth about the kingdom is that it's huge and it's going to eventually include—he talks about the birds of the air perching in the branches—it's going to include people from all nations. Throughout Scripture we've seen this. Abraham. Who is Abraham? He was one man that God called from his pagan family to come and to be his people. He promised him the stars of the sky as his family and the sand of the seashore as his family; and yet, he was just one man. And so I think it's very consistent with all of Scripture that ordinary, small, seemingly insignificant things actually have more value than we might expect. And so we can remember that's the way that God always works—that he's always worked that way. We can take comfort that when our experience of the local church seems ordinary, seems sort of ho-hum, seems not very remarkable, that it's not unusual, it's not unexpected, it's not even something that God didn't anticipate. It's just the way he usually works. We have to go to the Scriptures to find out the real truth and to understand what's actually going on when we can't see it with our own eyes.

Why Church Can Feel Underwhelming

06:24

Matt Tully
I've often wondered, what are some of the reasons why we do sometimes tend to feel underwhelmed? Do you think there's any cultural facet there where we're just used to—as Americans, or people living in the West more generally—there's so much spectacle around us, there's so many big productions of things, and we expect to be entertained a little bit more than we actually should?

Megan Hill
I think that's definitely true. I think that we have the luxury of seeing very polished and showy things. We also really like to quantify things. We like numbers and growth. But the church really doesn't offer us, even if you have a very big church that's well established that has a good program, it still is not going to be able to compete with Hollywood or with whatever the latest business models are, because the thing that we're about is really not about production or growth business models.

The Importance of the Local Church as One of Many Resources

07:32

Matt Tully
So maybe a related question: with all the good Christian content out there in the world today, there are so many books—you've written books—and there are so many ministries that give a lot of good teaching, and there's podcasts, and sermons online. With all of these avenues for Christians to grow in their understanding of the Bible and understanding of theology, how would you then summarize why the local church is so important for every Christian?

Megan Hill
I think first of all it's because the Bible tells us that it is. As we look through the Scriptures, we never see any lone Christians. There's no one in Scripture that's just kind of doing the Christian life on their own. God is always adding them to his people and bringing them together and gathering them. So gathering his people is just the way that God operates. So first, it's because the Bible tells us that the church is important. In the book of Acts people were converted and immediately they became part of the church. That was just a given.
Just to give one example: the church is referred to as a body, and we have all these different parts. If we look at 1 Corinthians it talks about the hand and the eye and the head and the foot, and this is the way of talking about how in our congregation each person has different gifts and they have different graces. But then when they come together, they're the body and they're actually the body of Christ. We would have no way of knowing and experiencing and of benefiting from and contributing to the body—these different gifts working together—on our own with a book. And so again and again in Scripture we have these pictures of how the church is better than just each individual part. When it comes together, it becomes something else—something more important and more beautiful that we can't get on our own.

Why We Need the Local Church

09:43

Matt Tully
So how would you respond to the person listening right now who is a Christian and maybe they would say, *I'm not looking to be a lone ranger Christian. I don't think that I can live my life without any friends. I have a lot of Christian friends that I spend a lot of time with and they encourage me in my faith and they point me to the gospel. Why do I need a more formal, institutional type of church context to be so plugged into?

Megan Hill
I think that's interesting, too, because I think particularly in a social media age we have lots of options for people to be friends with. Sometimes it's sort of self-selecting—it's people that I agree with or that I share an interest with. And sometimes people are actually very intentional about having people who disagree with them, or people who are different from them, because they want this experience of having different perspectives and I think that's great. I think that those kinds of other communities, whether it's in your own town or your own life or whether it's online on social media, I think those can be beneficial; but again, they're not the church. They're not the people that God has chosen for you. There is something about the local church, walking into that congregation and going, Okay, these are the people that you have given me.

The Process of Learning to Love the Church

11:10

Matt Tully
Your book is called A Place to Belong: Learning to Love the Local Church, and that subtitle would seem to imply that coming to love the local church can be a process, or maybe always is a process. Is that what you were getting at with that subtitle?

Megan Hill
Yeah, I think so. Obviously, I've been a part of the church for a very long time. My dad is a pastor—I'm 41 years old—and so for my whole life I've been part of the church, which might seem like, Oh, okay well, she's sort of a natural at this church business. But every Sunday is a moment where you have to go, Okay Lord, these people are my people. This worship is the worship that you have given to me. This is where you promised blessing. And so this is where I'm going to be. And I sometimes say that I'm glad that the Lord made me a pastor's wife because I have to be there. And that's just kind of the Lord's kindness to me, that there's no choice. You married a pastor, so I'm gonna put you here so that you have to show up. I have seen that being his kindness to me in requiring that of me and then allowing me then, by just showing up, to learn one Sunday after another to love this thing that he's given me because he says it's good for me.

The Problem with Church-Shopping

12:30

Matt Tully
So you wouldn't say that loving the local church then necessarily means that you love everything about your church or you totally resonate with every way that the church operates? Because that seems to be one of the main reasons that people leave churches or shop around for churches, they're kind of looking for that perfect mix that resonates in every way with them. But would you say that's kind of a misguided way to view the church?

Megan Hill
So much of belonging to the church is just submitting to the Lord's gift to you and just saying, These are the people you've given me. This is what this church has to offer. These are the gifts that we have. This is the music that we sing. And of course you want to have a church that's biblical, and so if you're in a church where things are clearly contrary to Scripture, or the leadership is acting in a way that's clearly unbiblical, then you need to think about where else you need to be. But if people are seeking to live according to Scripture and they're worshipping together in a biblical way and they're loving one another biblically, then sometimes you do—a lot of the time—you just sort of submit to it. I can remember a time when I was in college and I went to Scotland—I spent a semester there—and in that church in Scotland they would stand up to pray. I just thought that was so cool. So then I came back to my own church—the church I was a part of in college—and I thought, Why do they not stand up to pray? That is so much better for us all to be on our feet and all to be praying together. And so I decided, That's it. I'm just going to stand up to pray. Whenever we would pray, everybody else would sit down and I was just going to stand up to pray because I just thought that was the best thing to do. And the elders of the church were very gracious with me, and they talked to me about it. I said, I think we need to stand up to pray! And they were like, No, we're not going to do that. If you want to do that, fine. And I think they just prayed for me. Eventually I just realized, This is ridiculous. I just need to do what God's people are doing, and what I think is not really the most important thing here.

Matt Tully
That's good. It's such a humbling experience to be part of a local church and to be committed to a church, because I think it forces us to be honest about preferences that we have that aren't necessarily right or wrong.

Megan Hill
And you can't get a hundred people to bow to your own preferences, and that's actually a really good thing.

Advice for Those That Don’t Yet Love the Church

15:05

Matt Tully
So what advice then, or encouragement, would you offer to the person listening who feels like they're still in the middle of their journey towards loving the local church? For whatever reason, they're not quite there. They don't feel that desire to be part of a church—maybe their own church right now—as much as they know that they should or want to. What would you say to that person?

Megan Hill
I think one of the most striking things that I grew to understand as I was working on this book and also just meditating on my own experiences in the church, is that the church is really the place that we find Christ. I think that can be so helpful to us when our individual experiences of the church are either unremarkable or not ideal. To recognize that there's something greater at stake here, and that's finding Christ himself. We think of even that familiar passage where Jesus says, Where two or three are gathered in my name there I am in the midst of them. (Matt. 18:20) Which one of us doesn't want to know Christ, doesn't want to experience his presence, doesn't want to see him more? And here he's given us a very simple promise that when we get together with his people, he's going to be there. And that can motivate us on that Saturday night or Sunday morning or Wednesday afternoon or whenever it is where we're thinking, Is this really worth it? To set our eyes even higher than our own church and to Christ and go, Okay Lord, you're going to be there; I'm going to be there.

The Significance of Corporate Worship

16:40

Matt Tully
So what would you say is the significance of our Sunday morning corporate worship time? It seems like it's sort of in vogue right now to say, Yes, Sunday mornings are important, corporate worship is important; but let's not forget about being the church the rest of the week and finding ways to be the church throughout the whole week. What's your take on that? How do you balance the priorities of corporate worship once a week and other expressions of the church throughout the rest of the week?

Megan Hill
I think you're right; I think there's sort of both/and. But I think that the church, at its essence, is God's worshipping people. And so we can't ever get rid of that in favor of fellowship or a mercy ministry or outreach or whatever the other really important vital things are that we do. We are a worshipping people. There is a very real sense in which the other things that we do are all to the end of worshipping. So we have fellowship with one another, we encourage one another, we help one another to fight sin and to seek righteousness, we provide for one another, so that we are better fit to come and worship. We show mercy to people in our community and we extend the gospel invitation to them and we show love to them and concern for them so that they might want to come and be worshipping people too. So I think it's really important that worship, even though it might only be an hour a week, we see that as the main thing. And then we see these other things as contributing to that main thing, so that our worship might be better. So that we might be more holy and worship rightly. So that more people might want to come and join us in worshipping God.

The Concept of Belonging

18:33

Matt Tully
Why is the concept of belonging so important to how you view the local church?

Megan Hill
I think that the idea of belonging is something that we see through all of redemptive history. That God's people have belonged together in his presence. So even if we go back to Adam and Eve: we had Adam and we had Eve, and God made them for each other. He put them together in this place, in his presence to worship him. And sometimes we think about those verses as being about marriage—and I think they have implications for marriage—but I think fundamentally it's about the church, about God's people, and that he put us together as his people in his presence, in his place, as it were; and he's blessed us there. I think all of us, really, are sort of searching for that kind of belonging in our lives, and Jesus even tells us that we're going to have to give up some kinds of belonging in order to follow him. We might have to leave father, mother, houses, or land for his sake and the gospel. So he tells us, I know you have these places where you think you belong—with your biological natural family, in your home, or the country that you were born in—you think you belong there; but to follow me you may have to give that up. But then he says, But you will receive a hundred-fold in this life and in the life to come. And so he's going to give us a different kind of belonging, a different place to belong, which is among his people and in the place where he has called us to live and worship. And so I think that's really what the call of Christ places on us is giving up certain allegiances that we have apart from him and then joining our allegiance is to belong to his people and the people that he's calling to himself.

Matt Tully
That's one of the things that you highlight in the book is that idea of family, which is a very present theme or a way of talking about the church that we see throughout the New Testament. Many of the New Testament writers refer to other Christians as brothers and sisters, and I think it's easy for us to gloss over that, especially if we've been in the church for a long time and maybe even use that language; but it actually carries a lot of weight to it. So I guess I wonder on that topic of family and the broader idea of belonging, should the church become that central place that we belong, beyond and above our other relationships in life—whether that is our family or our close friends or co-workers—is it right for us to try to work towards the church being that most foundational community that we're a part of?

Megan Hill
Yes. But I don't think that removes our obligations to our parents, whether or not they're believers; or to co-workers, whether or not they're believers; or to people in our lives that we have these actual relationships with. We still have obligations to them. The Pharisees wanted to take the money that they would have given to their parents to support them and give it to the Lord, and they felt like that was more holy if they had done that. And Jesus says, No, that's not more holy. So I think Jesus still acknowledges that even the relationships that we have with parents or children are still important obligations that we have. But it is true that our life is hidden in Christ, and so the most important things that are true about me, or the most important things that are true about you, is that you belong to Christ. And so you're going to have the most in common with other people who also belong to Christ and have their life in him. That connects us to the people of God in a way that we will never be connected to people who don't belong to Christ.

How to Form Rich Relationships at Church

22:44

Matt Tully
What advice, practical tips even, do you have related to moving in that direction towards viewing the people in our churches as family, as brothers and sisters, and having that level of intimacy? I think sometimes we might feel like our experience of church is I go on Sunday morning, I sit down for the sermon, I listen to the service, we sing, and then you kind of just leave and I don't see the people the rest of the week. I don't feel that bond that we're talking about actually existing. Do you have any practical advice for moving forward in closer relationship with other people at a church?

Megan Hill
Sometimes I say that I think there are three things that we should say more often in the church. I think we should say "I love you" way more often than we do. Just those simple affirmations of affection for people, because we do love them because Christ loves them. And so even if our own feelings are not quite there yet, we know that these are the people that Christ loves. So I think we should say "I love you." I think we should say "thank you." Just recognizing people using their gifts and using their graces for the glory of Christ. I think we should give gratitude for that. And I think we should say "I'm sorry" more often. Just for the various hundreds of ways that we sin against people and are thoughtless and unkind and whatever. I really think that if, in our churches, we more often said "I love you", "thank you", and "I'm sorry", that that would go a long way toward building healthy family relationships in the congregation.

Matt Tully
That's so simple and yet so profound and hard.

Megan Hill
And it requires you to go first. You have to be the first one to say those things and then that will be helpful to everyone.

Can We Overemphasize the Value of the Church?

24:44

Matt Tully
It is amazing how—we probably all experience this in a small group or some other context—where if somebody is willing to to be humble and to apologize or to admit that they're struggling with something, it can often open up the floodgates for others to do the same. So it just takes one person being brave. We've talked a lot about why the church is so important and the value of the local church and why it should really be a big priority in all Christians' lives. I wonder though, is it possible for someone's view of the local church to be skewed in the other direction of being too significant or too important or almost like too much of a priority? I wonder how you would answer that—what language you would use to describe that, and what might that look like?

Megan Hill
I think there is a potential for that. I once heard somebody say that our relationship with Jesus is personal, but it's not private. And I think that's helpful because I think it is true that we do each have a personal call to have a relationship with Christ. Our own prayer and Bible reading and commitment to kill sin and to live in holiness and to share a word of Christ with others in our lives is a personal thing. It's not simply mediated through the church. I can't borrow other people's faith as my own. I need to put my own trust in Christ, by the help of the Holy Spirit. Our relationship with Christ is personal, but it's also not private. The church is there so that I could grow in those things, so that I can love Christ better, so that I could see my own son more clearly, so that I could have help to put it to death. And so I think we need both things. We can't consider membership in the church as a substitute for a personal relationship with Christ, but we also can't consider our personal relationship with Christ as a substitute for the corporate, communal worship of God in his church.

Personal vs. Private Faith

26:59

Matt Tully
I'm struck by you saying that our faith is personal but not private, because it does feel like there is a certain cultural attitude, especially when it comes to religious belief and convictions, that actually says the opposite. It says our faith, convictions, what we believe, and how we choose to live is very much a private kind of issue that no one else has any right to speak into. But it sounds like you're saying, for the Christian based on what Scripture says, that's really not the case. We can't say, My faith is my own private thing and you can't speak into it. We're actually supposed to be inviting that kind of feedback. Is that what you're saying?

Megan Hill
Absolutely. It's tricky to know how to talk about your faith in your workplace or among non-Christians, but of all places the church should be the place where we can talk openly about faith, about the things that we're struggling with, about the doubts that we have, about the things we don't understand, and to encourage one another in that. And honestly, I think the thing that we'll find is that our own struggles are not as unique as we might think that they are. Chances are, there are multiple other people who have had some variation of the same struggle and have seen the Lord's faithfulness and can help us with that.

Prayers for the Church

28:25

Matt Tully
So maybe as a last question, what are you praying for, with regard to your church right now, especially in this crazy time that we're living through?

Megan Hill
I'm praying that this season of absence will make our hearts grow fonder and that we will learn to love one another more. I'm praying for a sharpened desire to be together, and to hear one another's voices singing—I miss the singing so much!—to receive the Lord's supper together, and to have those conversations I mentioned at the beginning—just the casual We're here, so let's talk kind of conversations—that our appetites will be sharpened for those things. And then I think there are some good things that we've learned in this time that I hope that we don't stop doing. For example, I think we've all been super intentional about reaching out to people who are single, people who are widows, people who have kids with special needs, or who are immunocompromised. I think that it's great that we're doing that in this time, and I think it will be great if we continued to do those things too. As our own lives get busier, we don't forget the people who are single or widowed or alone or hurting in some way, and those patterns that we've learned in this time will continue over into our fellowship in the future.

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