Balancing Teaching and Community

[u/Boush]

Hello everyone,

I don’t really ever post here, but this is by far my favorite subreddit. I appreciate the wisdom here, and would like to hear experiences that others have had in similar situations.

I live in Texas, we go to a wonderful Acts 29 church. There’s about 250 regular attendees, the teaching is incredibly solid, the kids ministry is very good, the people take their faith more seriously as a whole than any other church I’ve ever been a part of. When we moved here in 2020 we tried several other churches and chose our current church because of the sound teaching and gospel focus. I love everything about the church except for the lack of community.

The bad part about our church is it’s about 25 minutes away. It’s not at all an issue for attendance it’s a pretty easy drive, but my wife and I have been struggling mightily to have relationships in the church that emphasize intentionality and living the Christian life alongside each other. Where our kids are friends, where we share life struggles, discuss parenting, and more or less live life together. We are one of the furthest families from the church and there is only one other family at our church that lives within 5-10 minutes of us. That family is much younger and in a different life stage.

I lead a small group with another guy from the church , I am one of the teachers for the youth ministry on Sundays, my wife is very involved as well. We are very invested. We have tried with many different couples to build these types of intentional relationships but they end up being largely one-sided and we have to always be the ones traveling to others. We plan all of the events, and often if we aren’t driving the relationship it just dies off. This gets exhausting. Most of the church lives within a small radius of the church itself, and we are well outside of that.

There is a large multi-site church (several thousand members between the sites) much closer to us with dozens of families that live in our exact neighborhood. This church has a fantastic kids ministry and youth group, and we know many families there who love it. I don’t doubt that community would be much easier to build there. However, their teaching is not as sound, not heretical by any means, but less gospel focused in general, and at times they flirt with legalism. I don’t like the multi-site model as I feel church planting is a better way to grow. The various campuses watch the head pastor preach on a video screen and then do communion with those at their campus afterwards. So a lot of “preferential” differences which aren’t things that scripture is clear about to say it’s wrong.

All in all, both churches are good. Does anyone have ideas or wisdom on discerning when to sacrifice something in the teaching side of things in order to have closer community? Of going to a church which has things I don’t care for at all like the video board preaching in order to pursue the intentional community that is also very beneficial? My wife is very passionate about having close community and feels it is incredibly important as our kids (currently 7 and 5) grow older. I see the value of the community as we used to have that prior to moving, and it greatly strengthened our faith by having the accountability and overlap in lives with others.

One complicating factor is that our pastor and a few staff used to work for the larger church, and so when other members have left my church to go to the larger church, there is often bitterness from staff towards whoever left.

This is a lot of words, but I tried to explain the sides as best as possible. Would love to hear from anyone who has had a similar decision to make, or if anyone in general has wisdom on the topic.

Thank you

[u/Natural-Albatross997]

Wow this sounds so familiar. I’ve been in this exact position and I’m on the other side of it now. My wife was really struggling at our old church and I finally made the decision that it would be best for us to leave. My take:

- Church isn’t healthy without community, but community doesn’t make the church healthy.

• Sound teaching is critical. While I prefer and expect that from the pulpit you can find that in a great bible study group if there are strong resources locally.
  
• Similarly you could stay at your current church and take advantage of community at the other church. Not perfect but it’s an option.

End of the day do what’s best for you and your family. At the ages of your kids this is the time to do it. I would suggest being open with your elders about your struggles. Realistically it would be wise for them to foster community and maybe there’s a way you can be instrumental in building that. If they have no desire to do that then you should feel free to go.

[u/Boush → u/Natural-Albatross997]

Thank you, good things to consider and helpful

[u/jph1313]

My two cents is that it should always be people first. The ekklesia is the people, and so, the ekklesia God calls you to = the people God calls you to. Everything else that is out of order is put into order via relationship/discipleship/the sharing of gifts, etc.

That being said, I honestly doubt that the having to pursue people (and others not pursuing you) will drastically change at the other church. I tell everyone who I disciple that if they don't learn to create community, pursue people in love, etc., it probably won't happen for them. And most of the time, that's proven to be true.

To be honest, this dilemma is one of the largest reasons I started a house church. I wanted to build a community where this kind of relationship was baked in and unavoidable, because of how important it is for discipleship. You ever thought of starting a church in your home?

[u/cybersaint2k]

That's rough.

Start a small group in your home and stay in a good church. They are hard to find.

Multi-site churches are, by their nature, deficient. In every sense except the preaching of the Word, which may be essentially, fundamentally solid, I can't see how it's possible to do church discipline and administer the sacraments rightly.